Books published by Regent Press

I came to words via music, having enjoyed many years studying Mozart and Chopin. In San Francisco I was drawn to the readings and was lucky to hear some of the Old Spaghetti Factory series and later Cafe Babar. So many great evenings! But I always thought it would be cool to have a poetry reading at 7:30 am as well, somewhere. No one agreed. Anyway, I thought I'd write a book. Literally, write it. This is the result. I'm not inclined to explain it. Some of what's in these pages happened. Some things did not. Like the reference to LSD on page 71. The line just happened. As for the title, it was a road trip. The cops show up several times in the text. Its because I speed and I like to know where they are. The "day for night" has to do with how night scenes used to be filmed. In the day time. But none of us were really fooled and I know you won't be fooled by this book either. What is entirely sincere however is my love for those to whom it is dedicated.

Love, Modernity,  and the Internet Just who, or what, is le chien lunatique?The poet driven out of his mind when faced with the catastrophe of the modern world?  The modern world turned into a rabid canine when faced with the hopelessly idealistic poet? Or when it looks in the mirror and sees what it has become?These poems – profound yet accessible, contemporary yet classical, eloquent and dynamic even when apparently most despairing – distill one poet’s somewhat jaundiced look at modernity, from the Renaissance and the philosophical revolutions of the seventeenth century to the nihilism of postmodernism, from the death of God to the bankruptcy of humanism, from the midnight of the Enlightenment to the immortalized barbarism of the internet. Yet behind all of these poems, supporting them like a hand, lies the passion that drives all of existence, old or new – the ferocious and uncompromising demands of love.A rabid dog eventually bites itself to death. So is there hope pour ce pauvre chien lunatique? Maybe there is. Maybe there isn’t. Only the future knows. It sits at your feet. Growling.  “An extraordinary, and extraordinarily strange, accomplishment. It is bound to offend at least one of your friends.”     – Jack Foley “. . . poems of diamond-like brilliance, filled with despair, passion, and surreal beauty. The poet . . . in an act of intellectual courage, climbs up on the rubble of western culture to speak truth to both power and powerlessness.”         – Mary Mackey, author of Sugar Zone and    the novel The Village of Bones “Another entrancing book from a poet and novelist of visionary authority, whose imagination is at once brilliant and unsettling.”     – Ernest Hilbert, author of Caligulan “An attempt to right the world . . . a generous collection.”          – Simon Perchik “ ‘The Wife of the Painter’ . . . takes my breath away . . . . ‘Midnight’ is . . .  a masterpiece, yet so modest as to almost escape notice.”     – Curt Barnes “In this provocative collection of poems, Christopher Bernard emerges as a maverick bucking current tastes and trends . . . balancing an unabashed prophetic fury with poems of great love and tenderness.”    – Philip Fried  

ABOUT THE BOOKIn the early 1960s America became involved in a brutal, devastating war in Southeast Asia. The war polarized much of the nation and threatened to destabilize America''s influence throughout the globe. The world was introduced to an entirely new kind of sports icon. He was an outspoken, confident young man who vigorously voiced his opinion about the Viet Nam War and racial inequality in America.In 1963 President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was brutally gunned down in Dallas, Texas. Two days later his alleged assassin was murdered on live television in front of a shocked nation. Later that same year the Warren Commission Report would be released to the public. Critics blasted the report for its alleged inaccuracies and narrowness of scope. The civil rights movement grew increasingly more powerful in the 1960s. The movement was a key factor in the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Horrific repercussions would shortly follow, however. Many young, innocent blacks were murdered and its charismatic leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., would be assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. A rock band from across the ocean would captivate a generation and future generations of young and old alike with its electrifying and unique style of rock and roll music. 1964 was the year that all these elements began to crystalize and produce the cultural phenomenon that we now know as the 60s.ABOUT THE AUTHORThomas Brennan lives with his family in Collingswood, New Jersey. He enjoys reading and writing about important historical milestones. One of his forthcoming books will be about America''s first mega sports hero, the incomparable heavyweight champion, Jack Dempsey.

The Tao Te Ching is a principal text of the ancient Spiritual tradition of Chinese Taoism. It is a compilation of wisdom sayings attributed to Lao Tzu, the old boy/philosopher/Master, recorded over two-thousand years ago and which has since undergone hundreds of translations, commentaries and adaptations. Tao Te Ching maxims are wise counsel given by sages to feudal rulers on how to harmoniously order their states and peacefully govern their peoples at a time in Chinese history of pervasive socio-political conflict and upheaval. The wisdom sayings have become universally meaningful and perennially relevant guidelines for successful leadership as well as for optimal living. The present work is an original rendering of the 81 Tao Te Ching passages wherein identifying with the essential Reality of Tao and its dynamic-kinetic energetic characteristics, qualities and activities are considered to constitute the unique individuality, true integrity, innate wisdom and potent Virtuosity of our inner human nature. The psychotherapeutically-oriented commentaries given for each of the passages are not only useful for professionals engaged in the attending relationship/process of psychotherapy but also for anyone interested in wisely and Soulfully living a more Spiritually awakened, natural, contented and enjoyable human life.  

A spine-tingling adventure across the Sahara, and a heart-breaking romance . . . haunting memories of war and a long-lost America after the tragedy of September 11 . . . a spiritual quest into the heart of darkness . . . and the discovery of the supremely redemptive power of love. "Voyage to a Phantom City" is a philosophical adventure story that spans three continents and an entire generation. It is about love, politics, tragedy and the search for meaning in a chaotic time.

ABOUT THE BOOKNone of the neighbors considered it trespassing. The run-down shack on five overgrown acres in the Sierra Nevada foothills had been abandoned for years. But their exploits on the land are suddenly threatened when a woman appears out of nowhere, claiming to have just inherited the place. As she starts digging around, she does far more than uncover weeds and rocks: she uproots the very landscape of each of their lives."Gently and poetically, Sara takes us on a journey into rural America where lives twine together in unexpected ways. Her characters are as rich as the landscape she so beautifully describes."- Beverly Olevin, author, The Good Side of Bad, Winner Kirkus Discoveries Best Fiction 2010ABOUT THE AUTHORAdina Sara is the author of 100 Words Per Minute: Tales From Behind Law Office Doors (Regent Press 2006) and The Imperfect Garden, A Memoir (Regent Press 2009). She was the feature garden columnist for The MacArthur Metro, a Bay Area newspaper, and her poetry and essays have appeared in various publications including East Bay Express, Oxygen and Peregrine Press. She resides in Oakland, California.

ABOUT THE BOOKThe Paintings of Art Pinajian, A Family Story, is an illustrated non-fiction novel about an Armenian-American painter whose work sold for a fortune after he died, though he lived on the edge of poverty. Ashod "Archie" Pinajian was a Najarian on his mother''s side, and what happened to his work became a universal story of greed and betrayal, yet his faith in the power of art was a redemptive force that never diminished."It is between me and myself that I work now.... My work is a reflection of what I want my life to be.... To understand the totality of art is to arrive at its creation.... If you are conscious of Totality, time will coalesce everything into one.... Searching for forms is terrific therapy and makes me feel good and refreshed.... No one notices, of course, except the creator and sometimes not even he." From Archie''s letters to his cousin Pete.ABOUT THE AUTHORPeter Najarian is a passionate and idealistic American author, painter, basketball player and substitute teacher who resides in Berkeley, California.

ABOUT THE BOOKShortly before he published Walden; or Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau called "The library a wilderness of books." He also noted that while Americans were "clearing the forest in our westward progress, we are accumulating a forest of books in our rear, as wild and unexplored as any of nature''s primitive wildernesses." In A Terrible Beauty: The Wilderness of American Literature, Jonah Raskin takes a long close look at the forest of books that poets, novelists and essayists mapped and explored before and after Thoreau. The first work of cultural criticism to look back at writing in the United States from the perspective of the contemporary environmental crisis, Raskin offers insights for students, teachers and lovers of literature as well as for backpackers and hikers who have trekked across untrammeled forests, deserts and mountains. ABOUT THE AUTHORJonah Raskin has taught American literature at Sonoma State University, the State University of New York at Stony Brook and as a Fulbright professor at the University of Antwerp and the University of Ghent in Belgium. The author of fifteen books, he earned his B.A. at Columbia College in New York, his M.A. at Columbia University and his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester, Manchester, England. He lives in northern California and has written for The San Francisco Chronicle, The L.A. Times, The Nation, The Redwood Coast Review and Catamaran.

"At a time when the confessional mode has banished American poetry to one vast self-mirroring island, the work of Jeanne Powell nudges us again and again to break out of our little selves. Whether celebrating the triumphs of Australia's champion Aboriginal athlete Cathy Freeman, berating a hellish vacation in the Sierra Foothills, disclosing the subtle and not so subtle pain of social injustice, or commemorating a powerful, dancing mother reared in the big band swing era, Powell rocks. Unfailingly, the open-hearted spirit of her prose and poetry allows us to re-experience our membership in one another." ­ ­- Al Young, California Poet Laureate EmeritusJeanne Powell has earned degrees from WSU in Detroit and USF in San Francisco. She writes prose poems, flash fiction and short stage plays. Her previous books are MY OWN SILENCE and WORD DANCING, both published in second editions by Taurean Horn Press in 2013/2014. For ten years Jeanne hosted an acclaimed spoken word series, "Celebration of the Word." She is the inspiration behind Meridien PressWorks¿ which has published 20 authors since 1996. She has been an instructor in the CS, OLLI and UB programs in California.

The Viet Arcane is a poetic vision of the Viet Nam War written in the early 1970''s. It was inspired by a book by René Depestre, A Rainbow for the Christian West, in which a series of poems enacts an invasion by the Vodou Loas - or Haitian gods and goddesses - into the southern and most reactionary part of the United States. Hirschman imagines a similar invasion manifested by Vietnamese Mediums who follow the Dao Mau (the Worship of the Mother) religion. He strives to remind us that the war in Vietnam, although now history, was the major catastrophe of its time and must not be forgotten by future generations. ABOUT THE AUTHORJack Hirschman was born in 1933 in New York City and grew up in The Bronx. A copyboy with the Associated Press in New York, his first brush with fame came from a letter Ernest Hemingway wrote to him, published after Hemingway''s death as "A Letter to a Young Writer." He was a popular and innovative professor at UCLA in the 1970s, before he was fired for his anti-war activities. Hirschman is a member of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America (LRNA), a founding member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade and the World Poetry Movement, the fourth emeritus poet of the city of San Francisco, and poet in residence with the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.