alice james booksFALL 2009

INSIDE

A Message from Carey 1

New Books 2

Author Interview 4Mihaela Moscaliuc

News and Events 7

AJB Donors 9

Staff Spotlight 10

Website Highlight 11

Our Interns 12

Alice Asks 14Donald Revell

Volume 10, Number 2

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Alice James Books founded in 1973

Greetings from Farmington!

This letter comes to you just at the time of pumpkins and peak foliage here in the western moun-tains of Maine where our town of Farmington rests in a neat little valley. I walked down the hill this morning to Alice James, the sky a corridor of hasty clouds, the air crisp and perfect, the hills aglow with our last batches of gold, evidence of thoroughly enjoyed autumn splendor, and thought of B.H. Fairchild’s poem, Beauty, the last few lines of which I now wish to share with you:

In this poem, “beauty” (in all its conjugations) is Fairch-ild’s incantation—and through him, we make it ours, es-pecially during these autumn days that are just so “beau-tiful” we can do nothing but pay them humble homage.

Fall marks the commencement of many important ven-tures for Alice James Books. After a short summer hia-tus, our collaborative board gathers to make decisions that will impact the present and future of our press. Fall is the time of our Kinereth Gensler Awards, a highly an-ticipated and signifi cant occasion for AJB, where new board members and authors are gained into the fold.

Fall also marks the beginning of our Annual Appeal. As you’re undoubtedly aware, this year we sent our letter along with a brand new look, which I hope, along with

our message, found you inspired to continue or commence your support for Alice James Books, recognizing that we are a vibrant and vital presence within a larger literary conversation. Thus far, I must say, your response has been incredible! Within the fi rst couple of weeks, we received approxi-mately $13,000 in contributions from you. This amount is just $10,000 away from our set fund-raising goal, and we thank you immensely for your support and confi dence in the press. For those of you who are still making an allowance for your gift, there’s still plenty of time to send it. Our appeal season runs from fall to early spring, and no matter what your level of contribution can be to the press this year, please know it is deeply appreciated and needed!

And how about this fall newsletter? Notice anything different? Why of course the new catalog is in-side and upon us. My, what a labor of love it’s been, but we’ve fi nally married these two seasonal items together, and what a couple they make! The catalog, of course, still contains an order form which we encourage all of you to use to stock up on AJB titles, or perhaps purchase some poet-friendly holiday gifts.

From our interview with Mihaela Moscaliuc, author of Father Dirt (January 2010), to our pages featuring our cast of new interns & one hefty intern project, to the “Alice Asks” section featuring Donald Revell, there is a plethora of exclusive AJB content inside this Fall 2009 newsletter.

So have at it everyone—Farmington may be all about autumn, and we’re sure to celebrate it, but AJB is and always will be all about you, our supporters, readers, authors, fans, and friends!

Best wishes,

[… ] we see the cityblazing like miles of uncut wheat, the farthest buildingstaken in their turn, and the great dome, the waythe metal roof of the machine shop, I tell her,would break into fl ame late on an autumn day, with such beauty.

AJB STAFF

Carey Salerno Executive Director

Julia BouwsmaAssociate Managing Editor

Deanna KaiserEditorial Assistant

COOPERATIVE BOARD MEMBERS

Peter Waldor, PresidentIdra Novey, Vice President

Mihaela Moscaliuc, TreasurerDaniel Johnson, Clerk

Catherine BarnettJoanna Fuhrman

Ann KilloughAnne Marie MacariJean-Paul Pecqueur

Bill RasmoviczEllen Doré Watson

INTERNSAriel CohenDory Diaz

Laura JenningsKelsey Lowe

Samantha Shepard

Volume 14, Number 2

Poet, translator, and critic Donald Revell, has authored ten previous collections of poetry. Winner of a 2008 NEA Translation Award, the 2004 Lenore Marshall Award, and two-time winner of the PEN Center USA Award in Poetry, Revell has also received fellowships from the NEA and the Ingram Merrill and Guggenheim Foundations. He is Poetry Editor of the Colorado Review.

Praise for The Bitter Withy

“...intensely personal, even visionary accounts and meditations are rendered with lucidity and ease...truly exceptional”

― Publishers Weekly, starred review

Previous Praise for Donald Revell

“It takes guts to write more poems about peace, war, God and children, but Revell’s are so fresh, it’s as if he’s the fi rst person ever to do it.”

—TIME Magazine

“No poet so innovative now is more accessible, and no poet half so accessible in recent years has made the language so new.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

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Ground-dwelling birds reply to thunder.It is sunrise somewhere over there, while hereStars shine still, and the secret doors inside the pinesRemain wide open. Which way to go?When I walk into the sun, my childrenHurry beside me. I hear footsteps and machines.When I go west into the stars, I seeNothing I could show you: ghostsWho are not ghosts at all, heartsOn their sleeves, eyes like melted diamonds.I truly believe that someone loved me once.A bird alighted on a bee alightingOn a green stem, and I heard thunder. God’s favoritesAre the little stars He drops into the sun.

“Kentucky”

Donald RevellThe Bitter Withy

new books 2

A “Best Books of 2009” pick by Publishers Weekly

September 2009

Joanna Fuhrman

Joanna Fuhrman is the author of three previous poetry collections, and her poems have appeared in anthologies published by HarperCollins, Hanging Loose, NYU, Carnegie Mellon, and Soft Skull Press. She teaches creative writing at Rutgers University and in public schools and libraries through Poets House and Teachers & Writers Collaborative. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the playwright Robert Kerr.

Praise for Pageant

“...moments of hilarity, illumination, solemnity and insight… Fuhrman’s delight-fully weird and most penetrating moments are a joy.”

—Publishers WeeklyPraise for Joanna Fuhrman

“Forget New York poetry. Forget Language poetry. Forget desires for a total-izing poetics. Fuhrman is a leader in the particular, in ‘infra-surrealism.’ She taboos nothing; no form impedes her complete wit. This full poetry is not only ‘feminine, marvelous, and tough,’ but subtle, searching, and wounded—sexual, social, and smart. Fuhrman celebrates new truth-telling, an art of the spectacular pageant.”

—David Shapiro

We wander, decorating fi ngernails with designer bacteria, adorning earlobes with the borrowed limbs of embalmed neurosurgeons. No one is sad. No one knows the word sad. Th e 21st century sleeps hidden in its permeable shell.

Every mystery novel ends with an opaque coff ee stain.Every love story—a missing tongue.

Mihaela Moscaliuc

PageaNTNovember 2009

new books

“Th e 22nd Century”

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Born and raised in Romania, Mihaela Moscaliuc came to the United States in 1996 to complete graduate work in Ameri-can literature. Her poems, reviews, translations, and articles have appeared in The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, New Letters, Poetry International, Arts & Letters, Pleiades, and Soundings. She teaches at Monmouth University and in the Drew University MFA Program in Poetry in Translation, and lives in Ocean, New Jersey.

an interview with Mihaela Moscaliuc

Mihaela Moscaliuc

Father Dirt

When Mitică, street-child-blessed-with-lightning-fi sts, as he dubs himself, allows the seven layers off ,his eyes turn into desert sands. Taut-winged scarecrow, he begs forgiveness for letting his body undergosuch mock baptism, then steps into the bathtub.

When I daub his shoulders with olive soap,he prays for my “bleached soul” in quiet tones,asking that in the name of Father Dirt I be granted absolution until my tongue learns the texture of rubble and the taste of clay.

Alice James Books: What drew you to the world of poetry?

MOSCALIUC: A number of fi rst experiences, I would say. When I was fourteen, my English teacher took us to hear one of the Romanian dissident poets, Mircea Dinescu, read in front of a small, quiet gathering. It felt special—risky, subversive, an act of necessity larger than the poetry itself. When I read a lot of Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Eliot, and Pound in college in Romania, along with some token Plath, Moore, and St. Millay, but I remember being mostly apprehensive about it all. As we say in Romanian, I didn’t know with what kind of spoon I was supposed to eat poetry. During my last year in college I was browsing through my university’s American Reading Room (a mini-library consisting of donations form various Fulbrighters) and I came across Th e Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets edited by Dave Smith. I took it out on what became a “permanent loan.” I read it cover to cover more than once and cop-ied down lines and stanzas in my journal. Th en I came to the States in 1996 to do graduate work at Salisbury University in Maryland

and later that year I realized that the person I had started dating (Michael Waters, now my husband of 10 years) was one of the Morrow poets whose work I knew and admired. I had noticed the name coincidence, but never put the two together. He had men-tioned, in passing, that he wrote poetry, but then so did every man wooing a woman, I fi gured. I found Michael’s passion for poetry infectious and I started reading poetry voraciously, indiscriminately. It wasn’t until I found myself trying to decide what poems I would want to steal and why, that I knew I was interested in writing. I guess being in love with a poet had much to do with inviting poetry into my life. In the Spring of 1997, Gerald Stern came to read at Salisbury University and something shifted irrevocably in my relationship to poetry. Poetry could be fun while being serious, it was or could be the stuff we, life, love were made of. During Stern’s reading I experi-enced poetry as a living thing, vital and irreplaceable.

January 2010

new books 4

“Everything Touched by Darkness Knows Itself ”

AJB: What was your life in Romania like? How have your experiences there developed your aes-thetic as a writer?

MOSCALIUC: It was much more diffi cult, less exciting, but also less complicated, though I keep changing my mind about this assessment’s degree of accuracy. Dur-ing my fi rst decade in the United States, I ex-perienced both awe and disenchantment (the common immigrant story), so memories and impressions of my Ro-manian life readjusted

themselves depending on where I stood, at the moment, in relation to my America. As I grow older and the Romania I knew retreats into the realms of the imaginary, nostalgia kicks in hard and often, inviting mystifi cation. So I have to remind myself that yes, I did have plenty of time to immerse myself in reading, or spend hours brooding on my soul, but no, I didn’t enjoy doing it numb feet and nostrils closing in protest in the minus-ten-degree apartment, or while sitting on an empty gas tank at 5 a.m. in the morning, hoping that the supply truck would arrive before I had to leave for school and that I would slip in the bribing banknote without blush-ing. One of the survival strategies we developed in response to the regime’s politics of deprivation and terror involved attended to daily details as if they were the only thing worth pursuing, the only thing that mattered. People were being “disappeared” for as much as a joke perceived as subversive, paranoia reigned supreme, and resigna-tion seemed to have had set in. Th inking about the future—or even refl ecting on the present—took the kind of courage that bordered (and often slipped into) insanity. I’m still trying to understand my “other” life, and that’s where most poems originate, in the need to remember, but also to make sense of things I couldn’t or didn’t have the guts to at the time. Perhaps many, if not most of my poems are fairly straightfor-ward narratives because I grew up in a country and at a time when to be truthful you had to be elliptical, fragmentary, evasive. I grew up decoding language, reading between lines, feeding on the potential of silences and empty spaces. So narratives, though old hat in poetry, are still fairly new to my psyche. I need them, at least for now.

AJB: Can you tell us about the experience of writing poetry in a lan-guage that is not your fi rst tongue? How has that informed or infl uenced your relationship with language, your poetry?

MOSCALIUC: I wrote my fi rst poems while working on my doc-toral dissertation, and I needed to escape the theoretical frameworks and constructs that were raiding my mind, to keep myself sane and

connected to real language. I was quite intrigued by the stories of immigrants arriving to the States in their teens, with no English, and trying to make themselves into writers (the topic of my disserta-tion), so I attempted my fi rst poems directly in English. Filtering my Romanian life through the English language has added a layer of diffi culty but also a sense of relief to the project. Life makes sense diff erently in English.

AJB: In telling a story that is highly personal and also larger than one-self, I’m always interested in how to begin. Can you tell us about why you chose to start with “How to Ask for My Hand at My Grandmother’s Grave”?

MOSCALIUC: You’re absolutely right. “How to Ask…” is very per-sonal while also speaking to other concerns and obsessions in the book. I wrote the poem while teaching composition, so it started as a piece of directional process analysis on a marriage proposal. I realized that even something as straightforward as that became end-less complicated when the context involved cultural/ethnic disconti-nuities and discrepancies, when personal narratives were inextricable from their larger cultural histories. Th e common language of love suff ers moments of intranslatability. Th ose are important moments, for they require that you make something out of them. Th ey make you refresh the language, coin new words, negotiate meanings. “How to Ask” is a love poem that sets the tone of the book: I’m yours but so are my ghosts.

AJB: Can you tell us about the signifi cance of the title “Father Dirt”?

MOSCALIUC: It derives from one of the poems in the second sec-tion, “Everything Touched by Darkness Knows Itself,” and refers to a homeless boy’s belief in a God whose purity and humility are manifest in his rawness, his oneness with the earth, the dirt. Mitica’s God was a lot more believable to me than the biblical one. I real-ized that if I were to believe in God it had to be a God who loved dirt, who loved rolling in the mud. In Sumerian epics and songs (see Gilgamesh and Inanna) gods create life, and sometimes pure spirit, out of the dirt under their fi ngernails. Romanian culture too is very earth-bound both in ritual and in thinking, as some of my poems (beginning with the opening one) mean to suggest. Th e title “Father Dirt” also speaks, if indirectly, to communist restrictions on religion, which was tolerated as long as it was not called by its name. And since, during Ceausescu’s regime understatements had subversive potential, “father dirt” would have been an apt nickname for God.

interview (continued)

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grew up decoding language,reading between lines, feeding on the potential of silences and empty spaces.

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interview (continued) 6

AJB: Many of your poems focus on the universal struggle to eek out an individual identity in a restrictive social structure. How has this confl ict informed your aesthetic identity?

MOSCALIUC:“…you were no longer permitted to know,/Or to de-cide for yourself,/whether there was an angel inside you, or whether there wasn’t.” Life under Ceausescu’s regime exemplifi ed Orwell’s idea of “doublethink.” In a society of total oppression, you learn to develop strategies to deal with two contradictory things at the same time without transcending or repressing the contradiction. On one hand, you were forced to follow the offi cial line and profess belief in things that were quite alien from your convictions—and you had to pretend you were happy when you were starved and deprived of all liberties, and you had to pretend you understood how that was good for the “progress” of our extended communist family. So you had to work hard at taking care of your soul and nurturing your spirit and not letting the corruption from which you’d unwillingly become part of engulf you. It took me years to start fi guring out how deep an imprint compromise (in the form of hypocrisy, deceit, silence) had left on me.

AJB: Th e second section of Father Dirt is about Roma children. Could you tell us a little more about your relationship to these children and the signifi cance of these poems?

MOSCALIUC: Romania has a long history of persecution of and discrimination against Roma (commonly known as Gypsies), an ethnic minority whose ancestors are said to have fl ed Northern India approximately a thousand years ago, dispersing though (and eventu-ally settling in) various parts of the world, particularly in the British Isles and Eastern Europe. By the time they were emancipated in 1863, after more than two centuries of slavery, Romanian Roma had already settled in the nation’s imagination as the quintessential outsiders and as a social caste. With the demise of communism, at the end of 1989, Roma-nians’ right to freedom of expression was restored, and many de-cided to practice this new right by giving voice to latent prejudices or by misdirecting their frustrations on the Roma. Th ey became the scapegoats for everything that was going wrong in our fairly chaotic search for democracy. Many of the orphans and street children I worked with during my involvement with the Body Shop Char-ity Foundation, a British organization that had started a number of programs in northern Romania in the early 1990s, were Roma or of Roma descent. Th is form of identifi cation which was something they resented and saw, for good reasons, as the source of much of their plight. And they were right. Many of these children and teenagers had been deemed “mentally challenged” early on, segregated, left lagging behind at every opportunity. Relegated to the lowest rung of society, Roma teenagers, especially those who had gone through the orphanage system, had very low changes of getting jobs and often ended up on the streets, fi ghting for survival. And we blame them for being thieves. Th e thieves I got to know were more honest (to themselves, for sure, but also to others) than most political dignitar-ies Romania has had for the last seven decades. Some of the most important things I’ve learned about living I’ve learned from these children.

I am particularly interested in giving voice to their stories because they have little chance and little motivation to do so. Th e Roma-nian-born French essayist and philosopher Emil Cioran remarked that “Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an impos-ter.” Yes, you’re damned if you speak in the name of the subaltern, but I think you are responsible to do so, so here I am…

AJB: Th e imagery of the poem “Chernobyl” is so haunting...could you please tell us a little more about this poem and your experience with the history behind it? Was it derived from fi rsthand observa-tion? Is there a symbolic or metaphorical element to this poem?

MOSCALIUC: Th e Chernobyl Disaster (April 26, 1986) was one of the worst nuclear power plant disasters in history, and though only two people died in the explosion, the released radioactive fallout, which is said to have been four hundred times higher than the one released by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, aff ected hundreds of thousand in the years to come. It took days for Romanian powers to make an offi cial announcement, and even then all relevant details were withheld. My home town (in the Northern Eastern part of the Romania) was only a few hundred miles from the (Soviet) Ukranian town of Pripyat, where the explosion took place, and although I had gotten some sense of the gravity of the situation from foreign broadcasts and rumors, I didn’t pay much attention. In the next few years, women started having miscarriage after miscarriage, children were born with fatal malformations, people started developing thy-roidal cancer, and still nobody seemed quite willing to acknowledge the connection. Th ere was a sense of fatalism and resignation that I found profoundly troubling, especially as it seemed to permeate our lives in so many other ways, and seal our fate as a nation.

The Kundiman Poetry Prize

Winners receive $2000, publication by alice james books

and distribution through consortium.

For more information visit www.kundiman.org

send entries to: Kundiman • P.O. Box 2565 • Staunton, va

24402-2565

Postmark deadline: January 15, 2010.

Open to ALL asian-american poets for an unpublished manuscript of poems.

ou had to work hard at taking care of your soul and nurturing your spirit and not letting the corruption from which you’d unwillingly become part of engulf youY“ ”

news and eventsKathi Aguero

lead workshops at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Lowell in October. She also taught a three— day poetry workshop at the Cape Cod Writers’ Confer-ence this past August.

Kazim Ali’snovel, Th e Disappearance of Seth, was released June, 2009, by Etruscan Press. His other book, Bright Felon: autobiography and cities, is due October 2009 by Wesleyan University Press. He also has new poems forthcoming in Colorado Review and American Poetry Review. Readings for the 2009-2010 academic year include readings in Oberlin, OH; Cleveland; Gambier, OH; Buff alo; New York City; Albany; Portland, OR; Houston; Detroit and Chicago. Kazim’s recent upcoming events include a symposium on Muslim American poetry at North-western University, a talk with Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon at the New School University, the Writing and Faith Conference at Calvin College, a reading with Joanna Klink, Michael Dumanis, Sarah Gridley, and Mary Quade as part of the “Poetry in the Gardens” program at the Cleveland Botanical Gardenand a reading at Williamsville East High School, East Amherst, NY.

Carol A. Borges’review of Pamela Uschuk’s poetry book Crazy Love was published in Th e Hous-ton Literary Review.

Cynthia Cruz’ssecond and third books have been picked up by Four Ways Books to be com-bined into one larger book for publication. She also has publications forthcom-ing in PEN America, Boston Review, Paris Review, Kenyon Review, and Th e New Yorker. She recently published in Th e American Poetry Review, July/August 2009 and FIELD, Spring 2009. Cynthia recently read for the Academy of American Poets reading, for Tuesday; an Art Project in September, and participated in the PEN America reading in October. She is currently teaching poetry workshops at Sarah Lawrence College.

Patricia Cumming,after a long silence, published “Two Poems for a Mirrored Room” this summer in CALYX Journal, and “Th e Way” in Th e Kerf.Ted Depperecently published Orpheus on the Red Line through Tupelo Press, July 2009. He read at Dingle Bookshop in Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland, in August and taught a writing workshop and gave a reading for the Blue Stacks Arts Festival, Rossnowlagh, County Donegal, Ireland in October. Ted will also be teaching a writing workshop at the Insight of Rathlin festival in Ballyshannon, County Antrim, Northern Ireland on November 7. Poet Annie Deppe and Ted also hosted the Dingle Writers Week, a seven-day conference from August 15-22 in Dingle, Ireland. From January 7-14 2010, Ted will direct the Stonecoast in Ireland residency in Howth, County Dublin, for the Stonecoast MFA Program of the University of Southern Maine. From July 7-14 he will also direct a Stone-coast residency in Dingle, Ireland. Ted and his wife also hope to host another independent writers week in Ireland next summer. Interested parties should e-mail him at teddeppe2@hotmail.com.

B.H. Fairchildrecently published Usher: Poems with W.W. Norton, 2009 and Trilogy, with illustrations by Barry Moser with Pennyroyal Press, 2009. He was awarded the Pushcart Prize in 2009 for “Frieda Pushnik,” originally published in Image, 2008. He will be the featured reader at AWP in 2010 for the William Carlos Williams Anniversary and a panel member for Image’s 20th Anniversary. He read at River Styx in St. Louis in September and will be reading again at the Guadalajara International Book Festival, November 30-December 2.

Erica Funkhouserparticipated in a workshop on poetry and ecology at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Lowell in October.

Joanna Furhmanhas a Poetry Project reading for her book Pageant scheduled for February 24th. Her article “Teaching Jayne Cortez” (and her interview with her) will be in the next issue of Teachers & Writers magazine. She will be reading at the following venues: Earshot Reading Series (with Steven Karl) November 20, 7:30 at Rose Live Music in Brooklyn NY; Book Party for Pageant on December 5, at Erika’s Salon, Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Labyrinth Books with Yerra Sugarman Decem-ber 8, 6 p.m., Princeton NJ; Celebrating the Renegade Press (with Peter Wal-dor, Jean-Paul Pecqueur, and Mihaela Moscaliuc), January 26th, 6-8pm at the ACA Galleries, NYC; Emory University’s “What’s New in Poetry” Series (with Joanna Fuhrman, Stacey Lynn Brown, Jenny Sadre-Orafai), January 29; POG Reading March 20, Tucson, Arizona; and In Your Ear (with Chris Nealon) May

17, 3 p.m. at the DC Arts Center, NW.

Dobby Gibson’ssecond collection of poetry, Skirmish, was published in January, 2009 by Gray-wolf Press. His book tour began in early 2009 and included many stops.

Celia Gilbert’snew book, Something to Exchange, has been published by BlazeVOX[books]. A Polish-English bilingual collection of her new and older poems was published this summer by the Polish publishing house Świat Literacki (World Literature).

Kevin Goodan’sbook Winter Tenor was recently published by Alice James Books. An anthology containing his poetry, Between Water & Song: New Poets for the Twenty-First Cen-tury, is forthcoming. Kevin read for Open Books in Seattle in October at Wood-bury Library, and will be reading at Harvard on November 7, and at Wesleyan University, tentatively scheduled for November 9.

Henrietta Goodman’spoem “Navigation” is forthcoming in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Spring 2010, “Canada” was published in Guernica, Spring 2009, and “Willful Blindness” was also published in FIELD, Spring 2009. Henrietta is currently relocating to Lub-bock, TX to enter the PhD Creative Writing program at Texas Tech University.

Marie Harrisparticipated in the event An Evening with Amy Beach with Th e North Country Players in October at the Sugar Hill Meeting House, Franconia NH. Th e event was a presentation of a selection of chamber music and art songs by New Hamp-shire-born composer Amy Cheney Beach. Marie performed the verse narrative she wrote to accompany the music.

Daniel Johnsonis starting to plan readings and events for the release of his book in April 2010. His poem “For Ebele” recently appeared in Th e Iowa Review and a few other poems appeared on Hinchasdepoesia.com. “Father Song” will appear in Barrow Street.

Alice Joneswas awarded the First Annual Narrative Magazine Poetry Award for “Spell,” a poem in her new manuscript titled Vault. Poems from the manuscript have ap-peared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Verse, Colorado Review, Volt, Denver Quarterly, New American Writing and Parthenon West.

Janet Kaplanhad several prose poems (including a prose sonnet) published this spring in the anthology An Introduction to the Prose Poem, edited by Brian Clements and Jamey Dunham. (Firewheel Editions, 2009). Th ese poems will also appear in her book, Dreamlife of a Philanthropist, forthcoming from the University of Notre Dame Press. Among other readings in and around NYC, Janet read as part of the Word for Word Reading Series in Bryant Park, New York. She is the Poet– in– Resi-dence at Fordham University in New York City until Spring 2010.

David Kirby’snew publication Little Richard: Th e Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll is being published by Continuum Books. He read at Hamilton College and Southern Illinois Univer-sity in October. Lesle Lewishas poems forthcoming in Th e Massachusetts Review and Bateau. She just led a workshop called “Th e Th in Line: between poetry and prose” at Great River Arts in Vermont.

Margaret Lloydhad two poems published, “Magdalen” and “Rembrandt’s Women”, in Poetry East. On November 20th at 7pm, she will be reading at the Downtown Writers Center of the YMCA in Syracuse. Margaret will also be giving a poetry reading at Fairfi eld University’s low– residency MFA program in Creative Writing in Mys-tic, CT between Christmas and New Year’s.

Adrian Matejka’snew book, Mixology, was published by Penguin Books in May, 2009. Poems re-cently appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Reverie, Salt Hill, St. Louis-Post Dispatch, and the anthology From the Fishouse. Adrian read in New York at the Bowery Poetry Club in October and will read at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Jan. 28, 2010. He will also be doing a reading (“From the Fishouse: A Reading of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate,

(cont.)

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$50 fi nances one book’s entry to a post-pub award

$100 fi nances one book’s review mailing

$250 fi nances the average cost of one AJB book ad

$500 fi nances an author book launch

$1000 fi nances the design cost of one AJB book

$2500 fi nances the printing of one AJB book

$5000 fi nances the entire production of one AJB book

news and events 8

Donations at any level can be made to directly support the production of a now upcoming book. Donors will be acknowledged in print within the collection of their choice and will receive a free copy of the book upon its publication. Donors should indicate the name of the author whose publication they wish to support.

and Just Plain Sound Great” ) and participating in a panel (“One never know, do one?: Identity vs. Aesthetics in Contemporary Poetry of Color”) at AWP in April.

Alice Mattison’sessay on the current state of short story publication, including a review of four recent books of short stories, was just published in Yale Review. Alice is one of four organizers of the Ordinary Evening Reading Series in New Haven, CT, which puts on monthly readings of poetry, fi ction, and nonfi ction at the An-chor Bar in downtown New Haven. Alice James poets who’d be willing to travel to New Haven and would like to be considered for a reading should look at their blogspot and send a few poems: http://www.ordinaryevening.blogspot.com.

Mihaela Moscaliuchas published poems, translations, and reviews in Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, Great River Review, Zone 3, and Connotation Press. She read for “Other Words: A Conference of Literary Magazines, Independent Publish-ers, and Writers” at Flagler College, St. Augustine, FL in November and will be participating in the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) in Pasadena, CA, November 12-14.

Idra Novey won the 2009 NEA fellowship in translation for her translation of In the Time of Jaguars (a collection by Brazilian poet Manoel de Barros) from Portuguese to English. She is publishing poetry in the fall issue of Th e American Poetry Review, the fall issue of Th e Pequod, and fall issue of A Public Space. She also participated in the Poetry Society of America’s “A Season in Poetry” series at the Bronx Bo-tanical Garden with Marie Ponsot and Monica Ferrell.

Lia Purpurawas awarded a Pushcart Prize for her essay “Two Experiments and a Coda,” which originally appeared in Agni Magazine. Some of her poems will be pub-lished in Th e New Yorker, Paris Review, Th e New Republic, Diagram, and essays in Orion, Th e Seattle Review and Georgia Review. She will also be participating in two AWP panels: “Letters to a Young Poet” and “Writing the Mind’s Wild Geography.”

Donald Revellrecently published Th e Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud (a new translation by Donald Revell) with Omnidawn Publishers, June 2009, and Th e Bitter Withy,new poems by Donald Revell with Alice James Books in September 2009. Th e book is on Publishers Weekly’s “Best Books of 2009”. He read at the Concord Academy Chapel, Concord MA, University of Rhode Island, Vegas Valley Book Festivaland Moe’s Books, Berkeley, CA on November 10.

Chad Sweeneyread in Santa Rosa, CA, in October at the Sonoma County Museum; Berkeley, CA, and read on November 1 at Pegasus Books; Talahassee, FL, November 3, at the Warehouse of Florida State University; Tampa, FL, November 4, 6 at the University of South Florida Graphic Studio; St. Petersburg, FL, November 5 at the Eckerd College Writing Center; and St. Augustine, FL, November 6 and 7 at Flagler College for the fi fth annual OTHER WORDS: A Conference of Literary Magazines, Independent Publishers, and Writers.

Ellen Doré Watsonwill be publishing her poem “Dream So Sweet” in the forthcoming anthol-ogy Th e Disco Prairie Social Aid and Pleasure Club with Factory Hollow, 2010. She has her poems “Parade of Possibles,” “Late Love,” and “He Brings Wood” appearing in the Fall 2009 edition of Prairie Schooner. Ellen read at the Massa-chusetts Poetry Festival in October at three diff erent events: reading with James Tate and James Haug at the Amherst Cinema, “Wild, Wild West – 3 poets from Western MA” and “Ugly Truths” with Patrick Donnelly, Frannie Lindsay, and Nancy K. Pearson. Also in October, Ellen participated in the Colrain Manu-script Workshop held in Colrain, MA. She will be reading her new Adelia Prado translations for the American Literary Translators Association on November 12 in Pasedena. She will also read at Ruskin Art Club in Los Angeles with Joy Manesiotis on Sunday, November 15, at 2:00 pm. CA. She begins teaching in the Drew University MFA Program in January 2010.

Give a Gift!

Coming next season

Phantom NoiseBrain Turner

Available April 2010

How to Catch a Falling KnifeDaniel Johnson

Available April 2010

Shahid Reads His Own PalmReginald Dwayne Betts

Available May 2010

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www.alicejamesbooks.org

Sponsors

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Patrons

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Donors

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Benefactor

Matt hea Harvey

Contributors

Robert EllisHarriet FeinbergMarilyn GreenbergTheo KalikowSydney LeaAlice Matti sonNina Nyhart

we THaNk THe FollowiNg iNDiViDUals For THeir geNeroUs coNTribUTioNs To oUr lasT Two aNNUal FUNDraisiNg aPPeals

Supporters

Catherine AndersonSally BallBob BrooksRonald CohenBeverly DavisCarl DennisJeannine DobbsLaura EdwardsPeter and Leslye FriesErica FunkhouserPatricia GibbonsDobby GibsonJoan and David GrubinDonald HallJoan Joff e HallHugh HennedyAlice JonesMary and William JoslinDonald Revell and Claudia KeelanDavid KirbyLesle LewisTim MayoJane MeadMihaela MoscaliucJean-Paul PecqueurJoyce Peseroff Lawrence RosenbergMary SzybistRita Waldor

Hugh Coyle and Maynard Yost

Readers

Tom AbsherElizabeth AhlLewis AshmanSuzanne BergerCliff ord BernierGeroge BlecherHenry BraunLisa BregerAnn BrowningDavid CampbellMary Beth CaseiroVanessa CatanzaroAimee Beal and Jim ChurchJim DanielsDeborah DeNicolaBonnie DickinsonConnie DonovanAmy DryanskyDenise DuhamelLynn EmanuelMary FeeneySarah GambitoForrest GanderCameron GearenRebecca Kaiser GibsonMimi GilpinMichael Glaser

Anna GoldmanJudy GoodpastureSarah GorhamAlison S. GranucciJohn GribbleJim HabaRhonda HackerVanessa HaleyBeata HaytonSarah HellerMary HermanAngela HicksNancy Jean HillMaurice HirschMichele Anne JaquaysDaniel JohnsonMonty JonesLisa KershnerDiane KruchkowJohn KrumbergerFrederic LawrenceRuth LepsonMargaret LloydJean LunnAlessandra LynchJoanie MackowskiJynne Dilling Marti n Anne MastersJulianna McCarthyMargarett a Jill McKayHelena MintonKamilah Aisha Moon

Idra NoveyJudith PachtAngela PalmisonoJuliet Patt ersonShelli-Jo Pelleti erNewton PressDonna PrinzmetalLia PurpuraRuth Anne QuickSusan Raby-DunneDavid RadavichCynthia RavinskiJohn RippeyKimberley Ann RogersBeverly SalernoNeil ShepardBetsy ShollJody StewartAllen StrousAlice TaylorJ.R. ThelinMona ToscanoEdwina TrenthamRebecca Gambito and Soloman VerdesConnie VoisineEllen Doré Watson Dara WierMary-Sherman WillisEleanor WilnerKen and Lois WismanMarilyn Zuckerman

we THaNk THe FollowiNg iNDiViDUals aND iNsTiTUTioNs For THeir sUPPorT oF THe alice FUND

9

staff spotlight 10

Deanna and Marley outside of the AJB offi ce

AJB: What drew you to Alice James Books?

I’ve always loved books and have wanted to work in publishing. I really like that an idea or inspiration can evolve into some-thing beautifully bound and readable. I serendipitously saw the advertisement for an editorial assistant at AJB and applied.

AJB: What’s your favorite music to listen to at work?

I love a lot of diff erent types of music. In no particular order, here’s a list: Beck, Tom Petty, Th e Black Eyed Peas, Rolling Stones, RHCP, Steve Miller Band, Wilco, Pearl Jam, Wyclef, Bob Marley, Th e Rustic Overtones, Th e Black Crowes, Th e Smithereens, Neil Young, Buena Vista Social Club, Th e Talking Heads, Th e Grateful Dead, Th e Basement Jaxx, Th e Strokes, Th e Dire Straits, Fleetwood Mac, CSNY, Th e Traveling Wil-burys, Wilco, 311, Radiohead, Grace Potter & Th e Nocturnals and Daft Punk.

AJB: What inspires you to get up in the morning?

Th is is going to sound really cliché, but I’m inspired to get up in the morning because of work. I’ve always relished routine, and having a job with purpose defi nitely helps.

AJB: Where did you grow up/go to school?

I grew up in the woods of Temple, Maine. My parents built a house on a big piece of land, and we didn’t get electricity untilwas about seven, so, needless to say we got really good at using our imaginations. My childhood was spent building forts, exploring and playing with my two older siblings, Dane, and Natalie. I went from one wonderful state to the next, and at-

tended St. Michael’s College in Colchester, VT, where I earned my B.A. in journalism and mass communications with a minor in philosophy.

AJB: What’s your favorite book and why?

Naming a favorite is too hard. Instead I’ll tell you the last book I read: Th e Secret Diaries of Marie Antoinette. AJB: What do you do in a sunny fall day in Maine when you don’t have to work?

I’m not sure, I haven’t really had many of those! I imagine that I’d take a drive, go on a walk with my dog Marley, or read a book.

AJB: Th e Beatles or the Rolling Stones?

If I was ten, I would defi nitely say Th e Beatles. When I was younger I had a fascination with anything Beatles related. I used to get teased because at school I’d go around singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Twist and Shout.” Although I’m a big fan of the Beatles’ early albums, I think now I’d go with Th e Rolling Stones.

AJB: What’s the one thing you can’t go through a day without?

My glasses or contacts.

AJB: If you were a dance, which one would you be?

I’d be a classical ballet. I started dancing with the Farmington Dance Workshop when I was about four. Dancing, like writing, is something that’s always with you. Although I still dance, I no longer dance on pointe, and I can’t say I miss squeezing my feet into those shoes!

AJB: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve ever received?

Th e best advice I’ve ever received was from my advisor in col-lege, Dr. Jon Hyde. Hyde (as the students call him) gives the greatest advice and guidance, but he also helped me grasp more serious concepts about how the world works. He helped me un-derstand that everyone has a story worth telling, and he taught me to never lose sight of that story.

Th e best piece of advice he gave me was to never preface any piece of work you’re showing (or reading) with anything other than your name and the title.

I think the worst advice I ever received was from this career advisor who told me I had to wear a power suit to get a job. I’m not a power suit kind of person.

Deanna Kaiser joined Alice James Books as Editorial Assistant in July of 2009. The AJB interns sat down with Deanna to ask her some humorous,

enlightening, and practi cal questi ons.

website highlight with Kelsey Lowe11

Th is summer AJB approached me about redesigning their website, I was excited but had no idea what I was really getting into. Th e following months would be packed with research, application modifi cation, cataloging, and more. As most of you know, our present website is perfectly capable of functioning, regrettably, that’s all it does. Th is project was aimed at bringing Alice James into the twenty-fi rst century. On the new website you can search for books, browse the online catalog and watch videos about our new publications. We even have a blog on the way. During the design phase I worked closely with another AJB in-tern, Becca Park, to come up with several prototype images. Th e new AJB website features Alice front and center. Cleaner, more modern lines are incorporated, and its new color scheme to really make it all about the books. We worked intensively in PhotoShop, Dream-Weaver, FireFox, Java, MySQL, PHP, and XHTML to make the new site interesting and navigitable for Alices. Everything on the AJB site has been coded and designed to function on its own for the most user-friendly experience. Most of the new features were built from scratch. No one else has an ap-plication quite like ours. Why? Because it was made uniquely Alice-friendly. For newer, more convenient functionality, you can now navigate a comprehensive drop-down menu from any page within the site. No more guessing which category a page might be under. You can actually see where it is! No more scrolling through long pages to fi nd a book or wishing you remembered the whole title. Th e catalog is searchable, organized by author, title, and publication date. It also off ers plenty of conveniently placed ‘view bookbag’ buttons. Th e new ‘bookbag’ is another important feature. We’ve teamed up with PayPal to give you an easier online buying experience. Simply click the ‘add to bag’ button featured next to any book or AJB item, and it becomes automatically stored in your PayPal cart. When you’re ready to pay, click the ‘view bookbag’ button, and you’re taken di-rectly to PayPal to safely, easily complete your purchase. You can also make donations to AJB via PayPal. Donations can be made in any amount, or you can choose to sign up for regu-lar donations to be credited from your account through PayPal for recurring, painless donations. You can also sign up to buy books by season, as well as purchase the original standing order. Th ere are new shipping options, including expedited ones, for that book you just have to have now. We’ve streamlined most of the older content on AJB. No more searching through letters or messages in quirky places to fi nd out how to submit a manuscript or send us an e-mail. You can do it all with a simple click. I can’t wait to have the new Alice site up and running and I’m sure you’re pretty excited now too. Th is has been an incredible experience for me; my work isn’t on the refrigerator this time, I’m showcasing my design skills on the world wide web! - Kelsey Lowe, AJB web designer and intern

A sneak peak at the new website’s donation page

A portion of the website’s new board members page

our interns 12

Ariel Cohenwashed up on the Cape Cod shore and spent her early life reading by the light of the moon. She meandered up to Maine with the idea to study creative writing and has traded her fi ns for a pair of legs to continue with her love of playing fi eld hockey. When she isn’t reading, writing, or running, you can fi nd her working in the UMF Th eatre.

Laura Jennings has probably danced in your presence before. She is embarking on her last year at UMF then will go on to fi lm school so she can bring her stories to life. She lived in France for four months and would love to go back if only for baguettes and pastries. She fi nds herself to be a lot funnier than she is poetic but keeps trying anyway.

Samantha Shepardgrew up in the small town of LaGrange, Maine

where she ran wild with her three sisters. She is daughter to a social worker and a fi sheries scientist, from whom she traces

her ancestry to the stone cutters of Deer Isle, Maine. Currently a senior Creative Writing major at UMF, she studies

fi ction and creative nonfi ction writing. Recently she spent the summer tagging and tracking American Shad

with her father on the Kennebec River. Her favorite trees are beech trees.

Kelsey Loweowns several computers.

Th eir names are Margaret, Winifred, Agnus, and Hector. She talks to them in code. Sometimes, they talk back.

A very wise person once said “code is poetry.” She agrees. < $_ SELECT* klowe ; FROM brain SELECT*

brain.sentiments LINE= ID=$14 “heart” ; FROM brain SELECT* brain.ideas LINE=ID=7

“poetry” ; .._$>

Dor

y D

iaz

Dor

y D

iaz

Dor

y D

iaz

Dor

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iaz

Dory Diazis a writer, photographer, and single-mom of two mostly lovely children. She worked as a project manager for AOL for nearly seven years, gave birth to her two – okay, they’re lovely about 85% of the time, and really not bad the other 15 – children, and decided to fi nally get her degree in Criminal Justice. After her fi rst semester at NVCC in Sterling, VA, she realized what she really wanted was to write (something she had always done, but with her BFA she could tell people she was actually trained), so she moved her two – okay, fi ne, 80% of the time they’re lovely, 15% mostly okay, and 5% truly awful but loveable anyway – children and herself to Maine, where she is now pursuing her BFA in Creative Writing at UMF.

13 Seen & Heard

Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno reads from Slamming Open the Door at Th e University of Maine at Farmington. Th e October 8 reading was coordi-nated by SAVES, Sexual Assault Victims Emergency Services and spon-sored, in part, by Alice James Books.

Bill Rasmovicz takes a standing break at a Beatrice Hawley Award screening.

Ellen Doré Watson amidst a pile of manuscripts, poised to make a decision.

Idra Novey smiles for a manuscript screen-ing snapshot.

Alice James Books: What’s your favorite mythical creature?

Donald Revell: Nothing is more real than mythology, and I have an overwhelming fondness for the Easter Bunny…though Jimmy Stewart’s pal “Harvey” is also dear to my heart.

AJB: If you could have a conversation with any deceased poet, who would you choose?

DR: I would wish to drink applejack and go sledding with Hart Crane. Our conversation would be sung.

AJB: What’s your favorite cuisine?

DR: Old-line, old-fashioned Italian…baked ziti and bitter broccoli as prepared on the west side of Manhattan circa 1962….

AJB: If you were stuck on a deserted island for one year what five items would you take?

DR: A Bible, the Library of America edition of Hart Crane’s poems & prose, a notebook, a box of pencils and my concertina.

AJB: What magazine or journal can you consistently read cover-to-cover?

DR: Gourmet

AJB: If you could choose to be any fictional character, who would you be?

DR: The Rat in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Chapter VII of that novel is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read.

AJB: If asked to prepare a tantalizing dish for your favorite poet, what would you make?

DR: My seven-lettuce soup…it contains enormous quantities of sweet cream butter and is quite the greenest thing you’ve ever seen, or tasted.

AJB: Have you ever run out of gas while driving? Where were you / what hap-pened?

DR: Back in college days…my best friend and I were driving from Bing-hamton, New York to Buffalo…my friend fell asleep at the wheel and I steered from the passenger seat for a long, long while, terrified. Happily, we ran out of gas in a place called Horseheads.

AJB: What’s your favorite time of day?

DR: Dawn.

AJB: If AJB took a look inside your refrigerator, what would we find?

DR: Just now? Strawberries, heavy cream, eggs, bacon and chardonnay.

AJB: What did you want to be when you were a child?

DR: A Bishop.

AJB: What was the last film you saw? Would you recom-mend it to your friends?

DR: A recent German film called “Cherry Blossoms”…it’s magnificent and pure. But my favorite film of all time remains “Jules et Jim.” It’s a damned fine novel too.

AJB: When was the last time you laughed out loud, and why?

DR: Jasper, our giant schnauzer, likes to play the piano in the evenings, and I laugh out loud every time that he does. Of course, we place his favorite toys on top of the piano, so as to inspire him…

AJB: What’s the most interesting thing you’ve found in your yard / garden?

DR: An abandoned limousine

AJB: Name the best and / or worst poem titles you’ve ever come up with (pub-lished or unpublished).

DR: A title I still think of as my best and which an almost universal consensus believes to be my worst is “Even Everybody”…it comes from the exclamation of an illiterate indentured servant in 17th-century New England…when a particularly harsh winter had been survived, this wonderful man rejoiced to note that “The cattle and even everybody seem changed!”

14

Donald Revell

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