Books published by Plain View Press

Questions of Fire is a poet's response to the complex 21st century environment, from work to home to war, in an age dawning with violence. This book offers not quick solutions to dilemmas, but discoveries won through experience, and illuminating observations of contemporary life. Meditation on Washington D.C. in April 2003 During the war, winter thawed in a rapid of hot and cold days, disarming us with a tempest of wind, lull, and rain: Walking to work in a wetness of caves, talking of war in flash fountains of sun, greens filled the trees like so many birds; birds will perch soon like so many buds; they will sing the ever-fresh song. . . . One way we understand poetry is by what is left with us-an aftermath-I cannot get these poems out of my mind. Grace Cavalieri, poet and radio host of The Poet and the Poem from The Library of Congress Gregg Mosson is a unique nature poet as well as antiwar beacon and poetry activist. Antler, wilderness poet and author of Factory One cannot help but follow, poem after poem, as Mosson takes on the personal responsibility of bearing witness. Truly, "solidarity" is what one feels then - the unflinching presence of a poet attendant to human experience, who asks the questions first of himself. Madeleine Mysko, faculty at Johns Hopkins University and author of Bringing Vincent Home

Mary Copeland dispels the myth still occasionally surfacing in the shallow waters of the ignorant that domestic life is some sort of refuge from the Big Questions rather than what it is: the very battleground where one engages them. In a language and syntax of stunning grace, vitality, nuance, and evocative power, Copeland­-as mother, daughter, lover, and acute observer of the human dilemma-takes us where the best poetry should, to the heart of the mystery of our own being. B.H. Fairchild, author of The Arrival of the Future, Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest and The Art of the Lathe Clocks We Watch showcases poems shining with luminous craft, imbued with a grace-haunted sensibility, and brimming with the full range and complexity of human emotion. Whether they're voicing elegies or odes, complaints or meditations, Copeland's poems feel inevitable-their truths realized through her use of a precise language wedded to necessity and insight. There is a plainspoken grandeur in Mary Copeland's achievement here, in her ability to plumb the heart's most profound depths and to reveal with such pathos its myriad mysteries. Maurya Simon, author of The Enchanted Room and Days of Awe, and Speaking in Tongues, and Cartographies There is a compelling gravity to Mary Copeland's poems, a weight that pulls us to reflect on our essential humanity and to try and puzzle out a meaning and a metaphysical vision that might lie beyond. All of these important considerations are rendered in accessible and expertly crafted lines and images that arise out of the everyday commerce of our experience. There is a compassion and understanding here. This a mature and fully realized collection of great skill and image. Christopher Buckley, poet, professor of creative writing, author of Camino Cielo, Dark Matter, and Blue Autumn

These are poems that have brought back into Indian English poetry the sumptuousness of emotions in all honesty of experience and, at the same time, are in keeping with the ancient Dravidian aesthetics. Lyricism of the spirit, of being one with the moment, of savouring the wonder of being, shines through them. The robust diction, unusual word-combinations and the ability to transform the most common into the extraordinary, set this poet apart. The affirmative resurgence of the self through Indian English poetry is best exemplified here. A J Thomas, Asst. Editor of Indian Literature; winner of the Katha Award, Hutch Crossword Award and AKMG Prize These poems come to me from a distant place and arrive at the center of the soul, the family, forest, city - where poetry is universal. Susan Bright, poet, recent titles: Breathing Under Water, The Layers of Our Seeing, publisher of Plain View Press Sweetness of Salt is hugely evocative to the senses with its exotic saffron bricks, watermelon tea, curry leaves. What moves me most is the way the poet has wrought memory work almost like wrought-iron or lattice work: his themes are familial love, and sensuous reminiscence. Of the house he was born in, he can remember: "Tile-roofed coolness / and saffron brick floor" patterned with ancestral footsteps. This is a brilliant journey well worth taking. Lynn Strongin, poet, recent titles: Dovey & Me, The Birds of the Past Are Singing and The Girl with Copper-Colored Hair MK Ajay exposes the molten lava at the center of our active volcanoes. Language erupts from below the surface in a startling explosion of burning and beauty. Pamela L. Laskin, poet, author of Remembering Fireflies, director, Poetry Outreach Center, The City College, NY Every once in a while comes a voice that sings with such clarity and vision that one needs to stop and take pause. MK Ajay's poems emerge from the heart and explore the very depths of the soul. Lyrical, haunting, filled with light and beauty, Sweetness of Salt spans generations and reaches across cultures, binding them together like a golden thread in language that lilts and sparkles. Mike Maggio, poet, author of deMOCKracy MK Ajay serves up lush, rich language in his exotic poems, layering jarring image over dreamlike image over the present, over the past. Elaine Heveron, author of Email To Cleveland

There is a wonderful honesty and flow to Mark Jackley''s poems that makes the reader connect with the brief vignettes he creates. His poems are without pretense and don''t dance around the ideas with fancy words or too clever cliches. These are poems that anyone can relate to and it''s that quality that makes you want to read his book straight through and come back to it a few days later. These are snippets of life without blinders, poems that are crushing in their earnestness. They are not to be missed. Karina Bowman Editor of Thick With Conviction Mark Jackley''s, There Will Be Silence While You Wait, is a personal glimpse into a psyche torn by failed relationships and loss. His pain and skepticism regarding a higher power is evident as he tries to make sense of it all. Though heartbreaking, there are breathers where you see him picking up and moving on. One poem that sums it up might be "Glimpsed While Stuck in Traffic," where he finds the hope and beauty in spite of the ugly. These poems of coping and perserverance are a must for any collection. Sandee Lyles, Oak Bend Review

Lynn Strongin a a marathon word-sprinter. Her work is beyond the pale. James LeCuyer, poet & teacher, San Francisco Very much the work of a true poet. Denise Levertov, poet, author of With Eyes At the Back Of Our Head, The Sorrow Dance: Poems, and Footprints What a great poet you are. Kay Boyle, poet and fiction writer, author of Winter Night, and Collected Poems of Kay Boyle All of Strongin's characters struggle in one way or another to find a way out of exile-whether it is the literal exile from geographic place, the figurative exile of adolescence and recovery, or simply the exile that we must all endure as we find our way into our individuality. Jonathan Minton, poet & editor Word-for-Word North and South are frames of mind as well as haunting inner and outer landscapes in Lynn Strongin's work Cassandra Robison, editor Magnolia, former editor Artistry Of Life I wouldn't call Lynn Strongin's work 'regional' though she speaks of place - what she really does is fracture place in the way the cubists fracture shape - and the soul remakes itself as composite. Susan Bright, poet, author of Breathing Under Water, Next to the Last Word, and House of the Mother

Doug Canfield''s poems are the careful expressions of a man who has seen deeply into the world and who has understood what he has seen. I suppose this is the essential definition of the poet, and Doug Canfield was definitively a poet. He has given us the great gift of his vision and his humanity. His poems are a pleasure, a revelation, and an honor to read.Scott Momaday, novelist and poet, Pulitzer Prize winner for House Made Of Dawn.In Violence and the Secular Douglas Canfield flays the reader with the violence endemic to our culture and within himself; but as he was dying, he wrote unforgettable lyrics to his family and to life. This collection embodies the complexity of the flawed but remarkable man he was - scholar, teacher, husband, father, poet.Richard Shelton, poet, author of The Tattooed Desert, The Bus to Veracruz and Going Back to Bisbee.Douglas Canfield surveys in unvarnished but poignant style the violence that seems endemic to humankind, reaching from his own experience into well-known violent acts of the contemporary world, and on to those of history and mythology. At times, with great effect, he calls in phrases from other poets past and present to strengthen his own powerful arguments. From poem to poem the poetry flows in a rich and swelling current, in free verse or sometimes in iambic form that does not emerge as iambic until examined - which is to say as the finest kind of iambic rhythm.L. D. Clark, novelist, author of A Bright Tragic Thing, The Plains and other novels.