Cultural Society! Dos Madres! Spring Has Sprung Rhythm!

Springtime is time for idylls and the modern version for me in the urban demesne is poetry. The Cultural Society, of which I'm co-editor, has just released THAT ABRUPT HERE, a powerful collection by Joel Bettridge. Tender, callous, despising and despairing, Bettridge's lines aspire to metaphysical uplift but find their trajectories faltering, spirits diminished, and perplexed. Wonderful work-- you can order it at www.culturalsociety.org.

Dos Madres Press, a small press in a small town--with large ambitions and sundry splendid publications, have just released acclaimed poet Michael Heller's EARTH & CAVE, a memoir of
his time in Nerja, Spain during the sixties, under Franco, amid the grandeur of the natural landscape. The book fuses memoir with memoiristic poetry--a thoroughly delightful book that comes with a CD of Heller reading. Also from Dos Madres--Burt Kimmelman's THERE ARE WORDS, a poetry volume that also includes a CD. Kimmelman is to my mind the most gifted of the post-Objectivist lyricists for whom minimalism is not a fault but a miraculous control. These spare poems are grand gestures. You can track down both volumes at www.dosmadres.com. Enjoy this spring thing immersed in verse!~j curley