Issue

A Mind Apart: Poems of Melancholy, Madness, and Addiction

"Much madness is divinest sense," wrote Emily Dickinson, "And much sense the starkest madness." The idea that poetry and madness are deeply intertwined, and that madness sometimes leads to the most divine poetry, has been with us since antiquity. In his critical and clinical introduction to this splendid anthology--the first of its kind--psychiatrist and poet Mark S. Bauer considers mental disorders from multiple perspectives and challenges us to broaden our outlook.

author: Mark S Bauer
ASIN or ISBN-10: 0195336410
binding: Paperback
list price: $31.95 USD
amazon price: $25.56 USD

Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets

The Sonnet is one of the distinguishing cultural markers of western civilization. Throughout our literary past, the sonnet has been used by our greatest poets--from Petrarch and Shakespeare to Borges and Auden. Now, in the twenty-first century, after a period of general dismissal in the latter decades of the twentieth century, the sonnet is in the midst of an extraordinary revival and has once again returned to the center of the literary landscape.

ASIN or ISBN-10: 0930982592
binding: Hardcover
list price: $20.00 USD
amazon price: $14.86 USD

Eggbeater Denial

The handle turns the little wheel;
beaters spin with a ruffled sound
and whir and whirl around and round
to stiffen the glossy, lustrous mound,
inflating the glorious puffed erection
of eggs and cream and chocolate: mousse.
Gastronomy’s divine perfection!
And subsequently this confection
dissolves in my stomach, to congeal
its sordid fats in gastric juice
and impose another pound.

F.J. Bergmann

F.J. Bergmann frequents Wisconsin, and has no literary academic credentials, but hangs out a lot with folks who do. Publication credits include Alimentum, Margie, Mississippi Review, Opium, and Southern Poetry Review, as well as three chapbooks, the most recent being Constellation of the Dragonfly (Plan B Press, 2008). Further iniquities may be viewed at fibitz.com .

The Fly Between

The Artificial Tongue

The dead around the tower seized
the artificial tongue,
which lapped half-truths in worn designs
and sang what had been sung.

They placed it gently in its box
and waited for false dawn
and ringed the tower in distress
when each had tried it on.

But when the dawn did not arrive,
they held their measured breath,
returned again to their graves
and died another death.

The Interment of Another Man

The Interment of another Man

I should be fixed on the preacher's words
but backhoes idle out of sight,
horseflies hum in mausoleums,
children snap their gum, bluebirds
dive and dispel the no-see-ums.
The sun is shedding little light.

And when I spied the billboard girl
in a choral spate of woolen grays
striding toward infinity,
I first surmised this somber mural
scene did not portend divinity
but was an ad for all that decays.

Søren’s Boat

Dennis Loney

Denis Loney's work has appeared in 32 Poems and the Sewanee Theological Review, and his manuscript, Casualties of Conveyance, was a finalist for the Hecht Prize. He received a BA from Creighton University and an MA in Writing from The Johns Hopkins University. In 2006, he received a fellowship from the DC Council on the Arts and Humanities.