Books published by Whale & Star Press

Joy Goswami is probably the most highly regarded Bengali poet today, a worthy successor, in a land of poets, to Rabindranath Tagore and Jibanananda Das. Although his life has never been easy, his vocation as a poet has never been in doubt. Goswami has written more than thirty volumes of poetry and prose. This is the first American publication of his poems.

World-renowned artist and celebrated teacher Enrique Martinez Celaya shares his views and advice on the art-making process, the development of a practice, the management of obstacles, and the day-to-day choices we must make in order to remain creative and honest. These concise teachings are relevant not only to artists but to anyone wishing to live a mindful, productive life.

Offers an intimate look at the aesthetic world Mary Conover forms from the disparate influences of her life, the Jungian heritage, and the ineffable presence of the sea. The book explores the relationship between the wild and empty places where Conover works and her ideas about the world and her place in it.

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Whale and Star Press For the Cowboy Junkies it all begins with a song: an acoustic guitar and a voice. But each song comes to each album with its own history, along its own strange path. Some are born and realized in a matter of minutes; others take years to finally find a place. Some pop out as perfect little gems; others mutate and transform themselves, stealing and pillaging from the unformed. XX celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the Cowboy Junkies, one of the most distinctive and influential rock bands in recent years. Starting with the seminal album The Trinity Session, the Canadian band''s signature sound, based on traditional blues and post-punk rock, has garnered much critical acclaim and an uncommonly devoted international following. The Cowboy Junkies are guitarist and lyricist Michael Timmins, bassist Alan Anton, and Timmins''s siblings Margo (lead vocals) and Peter (drums). This book, the first to focus on the Cowboy Junkies, offers an intimate look at the band through their own photographs and the poetic lyrics of Michael Timmins, who chose the selections. Each lyric is accompanied by a resonant illustration created by renowned artist Enrique Martínez Celaya, who is a friend and fan of the band.

Enrique Martinez Celaya's aesthetic project revives and reinterprets the classic Western metaphysical tradition relating aesthetics to ethics, the Beautiful to the Good and the True. Daniel Siedell, has worked with Martinez Celaya on several projects and offers a radical commentary on his work.

Drawing from the artist's sketchbooks, personal interviews with the artist and the works of Martinez Celaya, the author describes his impetus and methods in a conceptual volume of exceptional beauty and voice.

Offers a selection of Osip Mandelstam's poetry in English translation.

Enrique Martinez Celaya's blog, Bad Time for Poetry, began on August 24, 2007, and ended on May 25, 2009. In the emergence of the literary genre of the blog, it existed as an antiblog, showing how this literary genre can be used to cultivate and preserve cultural commentary. Martinez Celaya's blog is now preserved in this complete compilation of his posts.

A broad collection of Akhmatova's poetry from the earlier period of her career, plus a more constrained selection of poems from later years

A collection of documents following the long and often controversial career of "Art & Text", one of the landmark contemporary art magazines of the 1980s and 1990s. This book offers an account of the advantages and pitfalls of publishing an art magazine.

In the mid-1990s philosopher and cultural critic Richard Whittaker founded the art journal "Works and Conversations" to fill a gap in the contemporary discourse. Conversations with important artists have played a central role in the magazine. This work brings together what Whittaker considers the sixteen most relevant interviews.