Books published by Nightshade Press

A dog hole is a small, private mine shaft of questionable legality that individuals would dig to pilfer coal during the depression. Come join northeast Pennsylvania poets Thomas Kielty Blomain, Amanda J. Bradley, Craig Czury, Erin Delaney, Nancy Dymond, David Elliott, Brian Fanelli, Jane Julius Honchell, Susan Luckstone Jaffer, Dawn Leas, and Laurel Radzieski as they celebrate the northeastern Pennsylvania region and illustrate the many facets of its environment, history, and culture. These poems address everything from the John Mitchell-led labor strikes and negotiations with President Teddy Roosevelt in Scranton, to the devastation caused by Hurricane Agnes and Hurricane Irene, to the small town conversations happening every morning at the Bluebird Diner. Most of all, this book showcases how alive this literary community is and how the rich and storied history of this region is continually an inspiration to all.

The poems in Transient will stay with you. When the world turns to war, you’ll remember “Manufactured Rage,” while “Dreaming Washington Irving” will fast-forward you through the stages of your own life. Called up by such poems as “Reunion” and “Lunch at Monica’s House,” lost friends and family will return and visit. In poems like “L.E.D. R.I.P,” you’ll put the dark in humor up against the funny in tragedy. And if you wonder what ET makes of all of it, you’ll return to “Do They Deduce We Had Lips,” the debut poem in this debut collection by acclaimed children’s book author Gail Carson Levine. Those who look to Levine for the fantastic will find a dog-faced man, Medusa, Pygmalion, a hero of the Iliad, and--Jughead!–seen through a lens more Sexton than Seuss. The emotional range here is both broad and nuanced: humor, nostalgia, grief, shame, anger, regret, fear, and even–occasionally–joy. Throughout, in every-day language gracefully arranged, Levine elevates ordinary ideas and common experience so that all is haloed in light.