Books published by Plain View Press, LLC

At the Edge of the Cliff: poems, by Marian Kaplun Shapiro, experiments with visual form and edgy content to disrupt fundamental givens and generate transformative experiences. At her poetic peak, Shapiro uses word drawings that go beyond mere words to touch extremes of feeling and jar the subconscious. Shapiro makes each poem an experiment, leading a beautiful and challenging climb to the edge. "A book of poetry and drawings that explore emotional disconnections, silences, and efforts to make contact. ...her purpose is to pursue 'extremes of feeling' and their resulting epiphanies through 'experimenting with form and content.' These experiments encompass diagrams, sketches, spacing, and unusual typography, which often focus attention on conceptual organization. ...Poems that creatively reveal the unsaid and unsayable." -Kirkus Reviews "'If the clocks are running slow, will we have more time than we thought?' Shapiro muses. It's a riddle; an invitation without return address, a dreamscape brimming with the raw and paradoxical nature of the unconscious. Pivoting between visual poetry, free verse, and prose poetry, Shapiro, a therapist as well as poet, captures the wonder and challenge of our flawed humanity with a generous helping of grace." -Nina Corwin, LCSW; author of The Uncertainty of Maps "Marian Shapiro asks us to ask ourselves, 'Why here? Where are we going? What time is it? What is foreground? Background?' Shapiro guides us through an amalgam of poems, lyrical, brutal and redemptive. In the midst of her pinwheel of life, six wondering clocks, and assorted graphic and sprawling cursive mind play poems, she teaches us 'inch by inch' that we need horizon, 'To weigh/ the whatness of lake/ the whoness of mountain/ the whenness of/ sky.'" -Barbara Laiolo-March, Poet, cofounder of the Surprise Valley Writers' Conference "Joy. Terror. Sorrow. The author's familiarity with those unspoken, secret parts of ourselves brings us to that something in us that is even beyond the unconscious. This collection of poetry challenges the givens of poetic form, opening us to asking ourselves: Is there something like a spirit or soul in there? Could that be?" -Sanford Rosenzweig, Clinical Psychologist "In her collection of poetry, The Edge of the Cliff, Marian Shapiro hammers home some vital philosophy intertwining minute details and instructive 'eurekas' to transport readers to a lost time when existence was under less threat. Shapiro also allows glimpses into grim realities in poems like 'Rape,' that, instead of hammering readers with overkill, remind us of the horrors in calm terms. Her ability to mix the vastly philosophical with the intensely personal is evidence of her mastery of form." -Doug Stuber, Editor, Poems from the Heron Clan

My Mother's Daughter is a fast-paced, page-turning historical fiction about a mother's daughters, set in an era of southern plantations and slavery. Each woman finds her own way to develop unsuspected inner strengths and the will to change from who they are to who they choose to be. -Nancy King, author of Opening Gates and other novels at www.nancykingstories.com From slavery through abolition and women's suffrage, Thaddeus' sweeping story of four generations of mothers and daughters carries the reader away, down the Mississippi River on a keelboat, beneath the tunneling branches of the Natchez Trace, into the shanties and mansions of the Old South, into a bygone time that both unsettles and delights. Thaddeus is a master of atmospheric settings and striking characters who reveal both the sin and the redemption of the American soul. -Elaine McCullough, Professor Emerita of English, Ferris State University My Mother's Daughter follows Eugenia and her family through more than a century of changes in the American South. Set around the Natchez Trace in Mississippi in the 19th century, Rebecca Thaddeus makes the entwined familial relationships come alive. From Eugenia's trip from Philadelphia to rural Natchez, to the stories of her children, the plot's well-drawn characters and experiences of slavery and its aftermath are compelling. The story and historical setting stay with the reader long after the book is done. -Maryanne Heidemann, Co-founder (1981-present) of the No-Name Book Club Rebecca Thaddeus carefully and brilliantly wrote a story of an adventurous and daring young woman and the challenging times in which she lived. -Caroline A. Thompson, Teacher Certification Officer, Ferris State University Teacher Education Program

Sixteen-year-old Joan Larousse has a lot on her mind. She knows she is lucky to live on a big estate with her parents, two caretakers and a parrot named Victor, Joan loves the woods and a cave becomes her "church". Joan's life is generally busy and happy. With her French tutor, Joan explores existentialism and consciousness, debate and speaking your truth, patience and love. As Joan chooses a date for the prom and enjoys her first kiss, she also confronts personal delimnas. Her values differ from her wealthy parents, who do not understand her, and want her to change. Joan doesn't want an expensive prom dress or the Mercedes her father offers. She overhears her parents arguing; her father travels too often and her mother drinks too much.  When Joan and her friend Kristin find out there is a petition to fire their well-liked science teacher at school, they become determined to stop that from happening and becomes immersed in the complex workings of American politics. With the help of her father, Joan gains the audience of the President. Reflecting the bravery of Joan of Arc, Joan of Arkansas musters the courage to speak clearly from her heart for her cause. This story reminds us that the younger generation are our future problem solvers. 

Matthew Abuelo's Forever Turn the Midnight Carousel is a head-spinning depiction of harshest reality in New York City. Reading his sequence of poetry and stories is like "visiting the world of the forgotten." In subway tunnels, psychiatric wards, and single occupancy rooms are individuals depicted in such brutal honesty by Abuelo that the reader cannot turn away or forget. Those of us fortunate enough to live "ordinary lives with ordinary fears" won't easily file away this writer's images-a "shut-in" dreading an eviction notice, a depressed tenant conceding "the instinct to survive but with no will to live," a suicidal pedestrian for whom no cab stops. Forever Turn the Midnight Carousel is poetic recognition of lives cordoned off from meaning by urban excess and corruption. Through his searing poems and unflinching narratives, Mathew Abuelo speaks for those who know "the voice can become a severed limb." His stark reminder of desperation just up the block or down the hallway is a jolting call for compassion. -Judith Austin Mills, author of Accidental Joy: a streak of poetry, and the Texas Revolution trilogy How Far Tomorrow, Those Bones at Goliad and The Dove Shall FlyWith the opening lines of his new book, Forever Turn the Midnight Carousel, Matthew Abuelo asks "What do you see? / What do you see when you lift the drawn shades?" What lies in the poems and stories beyond the drawn shades is the universe of Mr. Abuelo's New York-its gutters, its streets, its skyscrapers-its people and their stories. It is a dizzying and urgent universe rendered in language just as urgent. These are words that will "dance forever" and "never die." -Robert Pfeiffer, author of Bend, Break and The Inexhaustible BeforeI have the privileged of reading yet another amazing work by Matthew Abuelo! Midnight Carousel will take you on a colorful, yet deep, deep as a midnight sky, ride. The ever turning spiral of emotions are filled in every line, stanza and verse as you are brought high and then downward again. The love of a city that is wrapped up in the arms of an old lover, that is slowly deteriorating around some while flourishing around newfound mistresses of whose sole purpose is to dine on the fatted-calf. Matthew paints a glorious picture with words as he shows the side of the "city that never sleeps" that very few and only those true professionals who keep the midnight oil burning long after midnight ever see. I highly recommend reading Midnight Carousel and following this profound writer. I look forward to interviewing him again very soon." -Mary E. Rapier, aka Art Sees Diner

Since The Song of the Rhinoceros (1973) till his recent collections of poems entitled Wounds of the Old Trees (2011), the Iraqi poet Sadiq Assaieg proves to be a poet of vision, passion and sensation. For him, poetry is no more an act of inspiration, but it is a complex craft to be mastered and thought of. His poetry, since the sixties of the last century represents a sharp departure from classical and romantic traditions in Arabic poetry and shows a real affinity to modernity. His poetic language is rich with imagery, masks and mythology. He always shocks his reader and contradicts their horizon of expectation and urges them to share the poetic experience actively to negotiate the innate meaning of his poetic vision. His poetry is motivated by the pulse of time and inner insight of life. Experimentation, suspicions, rebellion and rejecting poetic and social conventions are but some of the targets and motifs of his poetry. ? Fadhil Thamir, Iraqi critic The most prominent characteristic of the poetic text, written by the poet Sadiq Assaieg is the Collage, as plastic art, optical image, the internal rhythm and drama play a role in building the overall structure of the poem. Hence comes his dissimilarity with the most prominent symbols of the sixtieth generation. He declares without hesitation that he entered the field of poetry through the (white screen), but he remained alone, introverted on his poetry and happy in his solitude, engrossed in the search for his lost paradise and immersed in solving the mysterious equation of being human. The poet Sadiq Assaieg is an ascetic human being, does not want more than spiritual needs secure in this life, and confirms his presence as a poet and a man in spite of the continuous rotation between anxiety and stress. ? Adnan Hussein Ahmed, extracts of the interview published in Azzaman Iraqi newspaper

Nancy Fisher's images in Flame Dancer flicker, like the flame in which her personas dance, in a mirror that reflects a montage of past present and future in three dimensions. The darkness against which the characters struggle to fend off death makes experience of her artifice an experience of the dreams in the poets mind. The "hard gemlike flame" burns with the brilliance of artifice as the means to life and the conflict is always with the loss of the spirit that produces the bodiless head of the poet's nightmare. Her poems are an unforgettable and delightful experience. Robert Reid, author of Stories of the Sky-God Nancy Fisher finds the magical within the ordinary, the boundless within the constraints of traditional forms. Again and again, she moves gracefully from quotidian to timeless realms in ways that illuminate each. The range of her subjects, interests, and life experiences is rich and vast: family life, world travel; great composers, artists, poets, and saints. This is a book that deserves our attention. William Ruleman, author of Profane and Sacred Loves In her newest volume of poetry, Nancy Fisher widens her gaze from Family to Community to The World and finally to God. The poems are carefully crafted, many of them sonnets that put the lie to the rumor that English is a difficult language to rhyme. Whether expressing love through "Cleaning the Gutters" or traveling to Canterbury and thinking of Chaucer ("Pilgrimage"), Fisher creates a world a reader may enter to see, smell, feel, and taste the poet's own experience. A collection of poetry to be savored again and again. Connie Green, author of The War at Home, Emmy, and Slow, Children Playing

"The personal, the poetic, the political, the historic, the mythic-they braid together in this saga of the growth of a woman''s mind. Pat Falk''s story is unique, and at the same time she is Everywoman. It Happens As We Speak is a book of birth, and life, and change, and wisdom." -Alicia Ostriker"Pat Falk''s rare pastiche of memory and lively literary analysis gathers a momentum so persuasive that we catapult from page to page with the shifts and turns of her life as they affect her twin lives of scholar and poet. A riveting mix of candor and musing." -Molly Peacock"An intriguing account from the trenches of decades of coming to consciousness as a feminist reader, writer, and member of the literary community. A moving read for those who were there and those who want to know what it was like, and a lively resource for those aiming to understand feminist poetics."-Annie Finch"What''s particularly important about Falk''s book is that it is an ode to the art of writing and the art of reading from which it is born. It affirms the value of literary art to one''s inner life, of poetry as a means of spiritual enlightenment."-Daniela Gioseffi