Books published by Marrowstone Press

Bird and Tree/In Place,by Peter Weltner, is one book of poems composed of two. Its epigraph is taken from the English Romantic poet, John Clare: to "turn the blue blinders of the heavens aside/To see what gods are doing." In Weltner''s book, the gods are such fundamental powers and presences as the past, memory, human existence in place and time, passion in all its senses, and what glimpses of transcendence humanity is allowed to see. It is a poetry of quest and questioning, of a late life looking back, of form and freedom pondering those essential things long pondered before us.

LATE THOUGHTS is the most recent publication of poetry by the American poet and writer, Peter Weltner. These remarkable poems reflect the power and honesty of a poet in the fullness of his life. His poems, as described by Joseph Stroud, "...look directly at the world. They don't flinch in the face of loss and death. They strive for a transcendence where All's light, All's water, All's paradise shimmering." Or, as William O'Daly describes Weltner's poetry, "Weltner's agile, passionate ear guides and clarifies imagination, as the poems' emotional truths dance to intricate, organic music, delicate, tidal."

In these final poems by Bill Mayer, one finds a poet still in love with a life he does not want to lose, an earth he does not want to leave in which everything lives its amazing life, "all of us together, partners in the world."

A mid-16th century coinage, ‘antiquary’ derives from Latin ‘ante,’ ‘before, and ‘antiquus,’ ‘former’ or ‘ancient.’  An antiquary, however, not only admires or studies old objects or books; he also copies or repeats them.  An antiquary ponders past things in part to restore them to the present.  Peter Weltner’s collection of poems and stories, Antiquary, explores pasts, both individual and historical, personal and communal, in search of what endures not as relics, not as mere collectibles or dated things, but as lasting images and values.  It seeks to find those meanings, for good or for ill, which persist through time, the abiding human desires and experiences of suffering that confound then with now.

The Safety of Edges ponders liminal times and spaces, tracing the borders between now and then, here and there, childhood and the grown poet. The edge of anything is both a limit and a possibility, an encounter either safe or risky. Pruiksma’s poems seek what it is one awakens to in the half light between darkness and dawn, an emptiness that is not empty, a “saying in the silence,” “a song we can’t see,” or whatever in movement might remain still. Pondering a world waiting to be whole, they return repeatedly to home. Theirs is a quiet voice of the hints that the past, like the things that inhabit it, emanates, of evanescences, of questioning and questing, of the mystery of ordinary moments: playing cards, drawing, opening a door, building sheds, seeing neighbors. Not only doors or walls, not only voices, all things leave traces. ΓÇèThere is nothing “to dull the emptying darkness beyond even the darkness I could see,” Pruiksma writes in a poem that appears early in his book. ΓÇèYet he finds, near the end of it, “a darkness not dark, an emptiness not empty.” The Safety of Edges is a work of a compassionate discreteness, a generous simplicity, in which the hours of life are not lost but found, sometimes, “all of it here in our hands.”Peter Weltner, author of The Light of the Sun Become Sea and Unbecoming Time

Growing up in the South during the 40s and 50s, coming of age and 'coming out' in the Alaskan Arctic during the 60s, maturing as an artist in the Pacific Northwest during the 70s and 80s, Galen Garwood's SELL THE MONKEY is a fascinating memoir, one of humor and poignancy, swimming through generations of racism, homophobia, alcoholism, and uncertainty. It is an engaging chronicle of living and surviving in Ida's World, his glamorous and talented mother, who played ragtime piano at Alaska's legendary Malamute Saloon; it is a tale of monkeys, snakes, pigs, elephants, and insects; a story full of eccentric characters-Keoga the Snake Man, Dirty Earl, Greasy John, Mad Irene. It's about poets and painters, friends and lovers, art and sex, loss and discovery, and a life blessed by imagination.Born and raised in Georgia, Galen Garwood has understood early on that life doesn't just smile at us with her beauty. As a child, he's experienced tragedy in the family with her mother's survival of a shooting, lived through the challenges and shame of her elopement with Sam, and endured her errant ways, which eventually saw the young Galen and his siblings put into an orphanage. These are experiences that are powerful enough to leave a painful mark on the psyche of a young man. The reader follows his story as he and his siblings are ferried back to their mother, then their father, and then grandparents. Galen's story is characterized by tumultuous moments as he journeys through adolescence and struggles to get a job in a bar in Alaska and get himself through college. His quest to make sense of his life will take him across continents to Asia, where he'd make new friends and re-discover a fascinating love for art. The most powerful moment of his life would come when he freely accepts his homosexuality. The question the reader asks is: Can he finally come to grips with himself and fully reconcile with his past, taking full control of his destiny? Sell The Monkey is a captivating story of family, love and abandonment, and man's search for his identity. The story is told in clear and powerful prose, and the reader is pulled in from the very beginning by the ruthless honesty with which the narrator looks at his life. It's a story that answers the question: What does it take to feel at home with one's self? I enjoyed the way the protagonist was developed throughout the narrative and how he grows from a victim to someone who can live life on his own terms, embracing art and determining how his work can be appreciated

A remarkable first book of poetry. "Kevin Dyer's is a poetry of traveling, movement, transience, exceptional in a time when beauty is often dismissed or diminished. "filled with the sounds of leaving," of the commonplaces of departure, of the final passage." Peter Weltner