Books published by 39 West Press

Adventurer Gregory MacDonald narrates recollections of Baja California and the Sea of Cortéz-from the mid-sixteenth century to the present-as told by well-known authors and those who have been moved to record their personal impressions and experiences. Original illustrations by award-winning printmaker Judith Palmer transform Isle of the Amazons in the Vermilion Sea into a masterpiece.Myth has it that Baja California was once ruled by a giant queen, Calafia. Her subjects were black Amazon women, and they lived in a land of ferocious griffins, tall mountains, precipitous cliffs, and deep valleys. Baja was also said to be an island of gold and precious stones. Spanish explorers, lured by tales of riches and beautiful women, were drawn to this mythical place. Jesuit priests, adventurers, fishermen, hunters, and the curious soon followed.Montalvo, Cortéz, and Padre Eusebio Kino-in 1400, 1535, and 1701, respectively-describe the flora and fauna of a peninsula untouched by civilization, and in the twentieth century, Bancroft, Cannon, Crosby, Gardner, North, Steinbeck, and Octavio Paz, among others, speak of the fishing, the hunting, and, despite hardships, the pure joy of being. The writers observe fish pileups and feeding-frenzies; suffer insect bites, cactus pricks, and jellyfish stings; and are awed by magical sunsets, the silence of the desert, and the stars.Excerpted from diaries, letters, field notes, books, and journals, this superb collection of short impressions gives us the sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of mountain hamlets, lush valleys, hot deserts, and blue seas, creating a stunning narrative of the mythology, history, and topology of the Baja land, sea, and people.

Adventurer Gregory MacDonald narrates recollections of Baja California and the Sea of Cortéz-from the mid-sixteenth century to the present-as told by well-known authors and those who have been moved to record their personal impressions and experiences. Original illustrations by award-winning printmaker Judith Palmer transform Isle of the Amazons in the Vermilion Sea into a masterpiece.Myth has it that Baja California was once ruled by a giant queen, Calafia. Her subjects were black Amazon women, and they lived in a land of ferocious griffins, tall mountains, precipitous cliffs, and deep valleys. Baja was also said to be an island of gold and precious stones. Spanish explorers, lured by tales of riches and beautiful women, were drawn to this mythical place. Jesuit priests, adventurers, fishermen, hunters, and the curious soon followed.Montalvo, Cortéz, and Padre Eusebio Kino-in 1400, 1535, and 1701, respectively-describe the flora and fauna of a peninsula untouched by civilization, and in the twentieth century, Bancroft, Cannon, Crosby, Gardner, North, Steinbeck, and Octavio Paz, among others, speak of the fishing, the hunting, and, despite hardships, the pure joy of being. The writers observe fish pileups and feeding-frenzies; suffer insect bites, cactus pricks, and jellyfish stings; and are awed by magical sunsets, the silence of the desert, and the stars.Excerpted from diaries, letters, field notes, books, and journals, this superb collection of short impressions gives us the sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of mountain hamlets, lush valleys, hot deserts, and blue seas, creating a stunning narrative of the mythology, history, and topology of the Baja land, sea, and people.

Now, more than ever, our collective voices (and actions) must stand united in opposition to Donald J. Trump, who-by following the demagogue's playbook-seeks to divide and conquer by turning Christians against Muslims, white folks against people of color, men against women, and straight people against LGBTQIA people, thereby creating fear and hate amongst the populace.While We the People quarrel and vilify each other, Trump, without opposition, slyly invokes his true agenda: the marginalization of the masses and the continued facilitation of the advancement and concentration of wealth of the most affluent members of our society, which is evidenced by his billionaire cabinet nominees and bizarre infatuation with Russian President (and evil dictator) Vladimir Putin.Desolate Country, therefore, represents an amalgamation of defiant work by established artists and those who, as a result of Trump's election, were inspired to write in protest. It aims to give voice to believers in the power of art as both a spiritual catharsis and a manifestor of change and to those who are morally opposed to saying, "Trump is my President."

In the 1920s and 1930s, Pittsburg, KS was a major coal-mining town, attracting various ethnic groups from southeast Europe and beyond. The often belligerent and divisive spirit of the miners--and the unpredictable politics of Southeast Kansas--earned the region the nickname, "The Little Balkans." The four poets (Al Ortolani, Melissa Fite Johnson, Adam Jameson, JT Knoll) appearing in this collection carry forward that same proud, independent spirit. They call themselves White Buffalo, after a now-defunct café in Pittsburg that offered writers, poets, artists, musicians, and friends a place of warmth and community, which in turn fostered an environment of challenge and diversity.Ghost Sign epitomizes honest work that is both lyrical and painful while simultaneously joyous and sad. It is rooted in folklore and mystery, and its place is informed by powerful imagery: sunlight on the crater of a strip pit, the shadow of an owl at Camp 50, junkyard mechanics, railroad men, and a grandfather at a piano plunking out Methodist hymns. With craft and passion, the Ghost Sign poets, who each know how to remember, resurrect those indomitable, lost places, folks, and ghosts from the forgotten past of Southeast Kansas.Published in partnership with Spartan Press.

Following his break-through first volume of poems, Through the Years (2010), and its successor, Roberta and Other Poems (2011), Ricardo Quinones has upped the ante with a generous selection from those earlier volumes and additions from a ready supply of new poems presented here. A Sorting of the Ways: New and Selected Poems contains such poems as "The Grafting Tree," a mythical marriage between a giant oak and a chair; "Ten and More," the record of a ten-year-old's deflating experience of the Korean War after the jubilation of 1945 and the end of WWII; "To Pick a Penny," another far-reaching poem about the magic qualities of a penny; and "Spoiler Speech," the fragile hold of civilized consciousness against the uprising of a primitive rage. The volume also announces the demise of the popular "Wallet Poems," mainly by virtue of their own superabundance and their replacement by a new kind of verse, "Bloc Notes." In the poem "A New Beginning," Quinones takes the gamble of expressing his own philosophical and moral desideratum as to the nature of art and society, thus enacting his belief that at sometime a writer-poet must come to grips with those things he thinks essential if a society is to be reborn.

Ricardo Quinones has followed his first volume of poems, Through the Years (2010), with a second, dedicated in large part to his wife, Roberta. Unlike other such volumes of personal interest, these poems begin with specific qualities that are then raised to the general. The poem 'Odalisque' transfigures women, even in their sexual composure, into the sources of culture and civilization. Several of the poems are humorous, such as the one describing the couple's futile attempts to set aside Tuesday as a day of abstinence. All of the poems in Roberta are rich in historical allusions. The second part of the volume contains a philosophical poem, 'Rocks and Their Fellow Travelers,' which begins with the premise that nowhere in the Bible does it say that God created rocks and then proceeds to compare the nature of these anti-gods with Satan, Esau, Sisyphus, Iago, and Goneril (from King Lear). The volume adds to the very popular 'Wallet Poems' from Through the Years and then finishes with 'Profanities,' a poem that the late poet and critic Aino Passonen of Santa Monica declared made Quinones "a major American poet."

Written over the last ten years, Ricardo Quinones' debut book of poems, Through the Years, is a mixture of regular and irregular forms, with subject matter ranging from Kansas to Southern California. The sometimes jaunty and sometimes meditative poems seek to use common words in an uncommon way, mixing humor with seriousness.But many poems are philosophical, or deeply psychological, such as "Why Do Grown Men Weep?" and "The American Writer," while others border on the religious: "Desert Bloom" and "Oil and Water." The volume contains new sections called "Wallet Poems"--poems dealing with day-to-day subjects that are meant to be carried with you.Mr. Quinones' poems skillfully vary in their reflectiveness, ultimately making the collection practically impossible to summarize.

In his first published collection of poetry, The Will to Resist: and psalms of anger, love & humanity, j.d.tulloch asks the reader to momentarily transcend themselves and take a journey through American life in search of the existence of a selfless love that hides itself somewhere within the materialistic excess of an American popular and corporate culture that seems to tame our will to resist by teaching desire can become reality if one chases, captures, and possesses everything possible, as if our spiritual survival singularly subsisted on sadly serving selfish individualism, narcissistic need, and egocentric fantasy.What happened to the will to resist?