The Lost Bookshelf and Cervena Barva Press, located at the Arts at the Armory, is closed because of Covid-19.
Cervena Barva Press books and The Lost Bookshelf books are all still
available online at www.thelostbookshelf.com
Our used books will soon be available online.
We depend on sales to help the press offer great books. With the physical bookstore closed, we really need online sales to survive.
Here we go: The next Read America Read Project is November 28th.
Leave a book for someone to take anywhere you want. This time, ask two people you know to do this also. This way the project
will grow each month. I would like a book marker to go in every book so people know where they are
coming from. Please e-mail me at the following e-mail address and I will send you an e-mail back
with the book marker for you to print out and cut. Thank you for being a part of this project.
Lets make November 28th great! Send me photos too. I have a list of names of who
participated and as this grows, keep letting me know you are doing this. Thanks a zillion.
You all rock. Lets get America reading!!!!
Due to Coronavirus, if we are unable to leave books where we live, just continue to wait until it is safe.
Noel Sloboda earned his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. His dissertation about
Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein became a book. He sat on the board of directors for the Gamut Theatre
Group for a decade, while serving as dramaturg for its nationally recognized Shakespeare company. Sloboda
has published two poetry collections, six chapbooks, and hundreds of poems in journals and magazines.
He is currently an Associate Professor of English at Penn State York.
In Everyday Divine, Noel Sloboda presents a sequence of poems about saints. These figures stand with one
foot in the realm of the secular, the other in the realm of the sacred. At the same time, Sloboda pushes
hagiography outside of familiar contexts, revealing myriad new saints out there just waiting to be discovered.
Readers of Everyday Divine will catch "The Patron Saint of Shoplifters" filching a candy bar, listen to
rumors spread by "The Patron Saint of Gossip," and find themselves stuck in traffic behind
"The Patron Saint of Rubberneckers." In some of Sloboda's saints, readers will also identify parts of
themselves, thereby glimpsing connections to others.
I've been a fan of Noel Sloboda's work for about ten years. Everyday Divine is a series of "patron saints,"
portraits of everyday people told with insight and gentle humor. Sloboda serves up fresh text with lively,
palpable metaphors. The result is enjoyable, very readable poetry. -John Philip Johnson, Pushcart Prize-winning poet, author of The Book of Fly
Through everyday characters, Noel Sloboda's Everyday Divine makes the reader reconsider what he or she takes for
granted. Whether it be a character reevaluating his anxieties, a shoplifter stealing out of need and transforming
the act into performance art, or because of line breaks like "Always says never imagine // this will not happen / again,"
the reader's expectations are upended. Like all good art, these poems challenge the reader’s everyday habits of
perception for the better. -Tom Holmes, editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics
$8.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-06-2 | 30 Pages
New Release: Ash by Gloria Mindock from Glass Lyre Press
Gloria Mindock is the author of I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me (Nixes Mate Books), Whiteness of Bone
(Glass Lyre Press), La Portile Raiului (Ars Longa Press, Romania) translated into the Romanian by Flavia
Cosma, Nothing Divine Here, (U Šoku Štampa), and Blood Soaked Dresses (Ibbetson).
Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated and published into the Romanian,
Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Spanish, Estonian, Albanian, bulgarian, Turkish, and French. Gloria has been published in
numerous literary journals including Gargoyle, Web Del Sol, spoKe, Constellations: A Journal of Poetry and Fiction,Ibbetson, The Rye Whiskey Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Unlikely Stories, Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary
Writing and Nixes Mate Review and anthology. Gloria has been awarded the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime
Achievement Award and was the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award for Community Service by the
Newton Writing and Publishing Center. She received the fifth and fortieth Moon Prize from Writing in a
Woman's Voice. Gloria was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018.
In Gloria Mindock's powerful new book, the flames of love die out and the ashes linger until they dissolve into air.
The body is hostage, in charred relics of failed intimacies—The burnt-out ends of smoky days (T.S. Eliot).
There's beauty in the truth of Mindock's words and images: Things got smokier, battling the embers with//false waters.
And there's hope: Not everyone believes in destruction.// All the heart wants is to beat. Above all,
these poems radiate feeling, compassionately aware, attuned to a world of broken love that is burned beyond
recognition, the ashes drifting and settling: how much sorrow can this heart take?// There is never an answer.
Ash sears and sings. —Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest
In Ash, Gloria Mindock writes a gritty, beautifully haunting collection of poetry. Ash is what remains behind after
destruction, ruin, death, and burning. Similarly, the poems in this collection are what will remain. Fight the shadows
and wade through the darkness on a path paved by Mindock's vivid imagery, stark language, and dynamic voice, all of which,
make for a most memorable experience. Now more than ever, we need these poems. With the utmost economy of words, skillful
syntax, and emotional connections, each poem reverberates into the depths of your consciousness. Dark, intense, and wholly
unique, Ash, by Gloria Mindock is what you've been waiting for—a collection of poetry that consumes and smolders.
Are you ready? —Renuka Raghavan, author of Out of the Blue and The Face I Desire
Gloria Mindock is a poet with singular vision: in Ash, a human heart is rolled out, then baked, then thrown to the birds;
broken crucifixes are shoved into junk drawers and gather dust; a spurned/murdered woman turns into a beautiful plant
that gives her ex-lover a rash. With mordant, Pinter-esque wit, Mindock explores just how far love, and even human
decency, can unravel—to the point of arson, to the point of war. Ash begin with a series of poems about lethal house fires that may be literal or metaphorical ("my skin was burned by
your compulsion to be famous"), then expands to pinpoint the similar essence of human cruelty that enables soldiers to
kill. As the narrator of "Doomed by the Numbers" explains: "the fact is people will still go on brutally/killing each
other./Who will take my place and write about it?" Ash concludes with an engaging, Rabelaisian roundelay of voices—mini-plays, summed up in just two stanzas, about
complicated relationships between two people.
Once again, with Ash, Mindock proves herself to be unafraid of the dark. She is truly a leading,
contemporary master of the edgy. —Karen Friedland, author of Places That Are Gone and Tales from the Teacup Palace
Passionate and observant, Gloria Mindock is a tragic poet.
Her books are wounds revisited. She knows that nothing, never heals.
"With a rolling pin in my hand, I roll your heart out flat... stop it from beating.
The redness of blood turns to wax, sticky while wet." (Baked)
She senses the pain of the world in her being.
"The void looms deep, scorched like the desert blowing aimlessly." (Exit)
As her latest book Ash attests without doubt, Gloria is both a warrior and a martyr. Her words are
swords that slowly transform into tears.
Her anger at life's injustice is mighty, but mighty is her generosity and her openness towards repair, harmony and universal peace.
A must-read Ash conducts the reader through thorny labyrinths of pain and despair, allowing now and then a glimpse of ultimate
resolve and liberation in verses of a rare beauty:
"...but gravity is about to free me into space... People will look at me day and night and ask, "what is it?" There is no control
over what happens. The cathedral is high and my freckles fell on the floor as I left. Paleness now, that no one sees, but in
the universe, I will be a prism." (Gravity)
"...A hunger surrounds us, dust gathers, and is wiped off, space evading all this as songs of the wind come through the window
and we all hum." (Room) —Flavia Cosma, author of In the Arms of the Father, Val-David, QC
Sherri Felt Dratfield graduated from Goucher College and is a member
of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. She received an M.F.A. in Acting
from the University of Denver and holds a J.D., with election to
Order of the Coif, from New York University School of Law. Sherri is
the author of two previous collections of poetry, The City (Finishing
Line Press, 2013) and Water Vigils (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Both
collections were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have
appeared in various journals and anthologies and have been awarded
recognition in the Margaret Reid Contest for Traditional Verse,
Jewish Currents' Raines Poetry Competition and the Passager Poetry
Contest. Sherri lives in the West Village of Manhattan with her
husband, Simon. They visit their shore home in Ventnor City, New
Jersey during all seasons.
Sherri Felt Dratfield's new collection Millie Collins, Your Barn Is Gone explores change, loss, healing and renewal.
Its sections correspond to Ecclesiastes' "to everything there is a season..." The poems take us from Venice, Italy to the
seashore to the cafes of New York City; from learning a vaudeville song with Jimmy Durante to engaging the Madona in a
Bellini Triptych to examining the divinity of an egg.
Sherri Felt Dratfield goes from strength to strength in this, her third book of poems. Gazing on minute details,
she finds miracles in ordinary life, whether on city streets, on the shore, in her beloved Venice, or in her childhood.
She writes joyfully of the woman on a dune, Murano leaves, a remembered song. And yet, devoted as she is to earthly
realities, an underlying mysticism pervades this collection. Reading it, we are taken far beyond and under and above
the world she captures in words to a place where only silence prevails. This is the remarkable effect of "Two O'Clock Bells,"
in which she watches the Campanile and hears, "three bells in unison./ I saw sound and felt life echo - /brief, gone." -Grace Schulman, Winner of the Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry
and Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
The exquisite poems in Sherri Felt Dratfield's brilliant, luminous Millie Collins, Your Barn Is Gone draw on
mythology and geography to explore themes of identity, memory, love, and loss. At once spiritual, intimate and
worldly, they weave a rich tapestry of alchemical music. Inhabited by recurring angels, bristling with flurries
of animals and a cornucopia of flowers, this collection is a feast for all the senses and a testimony to the
redeeming power of beauty.
To read Felt Dratfield is to be edified and entranced. She takes us down the rabbit hole in the magical
"Arboreal," one of several stunning ekphrastic poems. Her timeless, exacting poetry lavishes us with
blessings that "course veinlike through [our] hearts" and like "stronger tides forge fiercer bonds." -Hélène Cardona, Independent Press Award and International Book Award Winner
In this spare novelette, acclaimed flash fiction writers James Claffey and Tara Lynn Masih collaboratively
create an original tale of loss and love, as The Bitter Kind deftly alternates between Stela, the daughter of a ship's
captain, burdened by her family secrets, and Brandy, a Chippewa orphan, haunted by ghost wolves and spirits. The authors cross
genres and borders between historical and contemporary, speculative and realistic, presenting two unforgettable characters on
a journey toward their inevitable, fateful destination.
"With two writers as well matched artistically as Tara Lynn Masih and James Claffey, a collaboration is cause to celebrate.
This richly woven, haunting novelette transcends the confines of its brevity; feels tender, sprawling, immersive.
The Bitter Kind is an alchemy, a duet, a gorgeous melding of two of our most treasured literary voices." -Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018
"With short, alternating passages, James Claffey and Tara Masih vividly illuminate the separate and commingled lives of
Stela and Brandy in this original and elegantly textured novella. It is a story, human and soulful, of place, mysticism,
and the hard-won ground we all struggle toward." -Robert Scotellaro, author of Nothing Is Ever One Thing
"From ghost-soaked frontier towns to leafy waterways, frozen river basins, and the open road, Tara Masih’s and James
Claffey’s parallel narratives tumble along through stunning landscapes of loneliness and beauty. The writing is evocative
and tender, exploring both the haunted and the haunting; touching in its examination of broken things and masterful in
its prose." -Kimberly Lojewski, author of Worm Fiddling Nocturne in the Key of a Broken Heart
"With beautiful imagery and a seamless voice, Masih and Claffey move us through decades as two parallel lives seek solace
and healthy human connection. Stela, long plagued by abusive relationships, and Brandy, spurred by tragedy and unlucky in love,
are shaped and steered by the things that haunt them, and, perhaps, the things that will someday guide them to heal. This winning
collaborative effort is both stirring and satisfying." -Mel Bosworth, author of FREIGHT and coauthor of Second Acts in American Lives
"With their binocular lyric lenses, Masih and Claffey provide a lacquered and sanded depth to this compilation set in the
chambered karst of our heartfelt heartland. The book is a layered lanyard, a laurel wreath, an ouroboros, Mobius’s Mobius,
an effortless enso, and a terrific torqueing torus. The diastolic/systolic dub-Dub, a syncopated sink or swim, of the call and
response had me reeling, a time step timed to hit the one and the three. What I am saying is that this is a tour de force, a fait
accompli." -Michael Martone, author of Brooding and The Moon Over Wapakoneta
Reviews:
"To read The Bitter Kind is to witness two writers who, in this slim 68-page volume, manage a marvel by beautifully performing
two seemingly impossible tasks... the first astonishing thing about The Bitter Kind: Masih and Claffey blend their styles
so seamlessly that, aside from a very few turns of phrase, it's nearly impossible to tell the difference between their voices.
The second astonishing aspect of this book is that Masih and Claffey create a rivetingly cohesive central narrative from flash
segments... Even more extraordinarily, they form a novelette with the scope and sense of fulfillment one would expect
of a much longer work."
Ioana Ieronim is a distinguished Romanian writer, author of more than ten collections of poetry
(three in English) and a volume of drama. Her narrative poetry in Lavinia and Her Daughters as
well as The Triumph of the Water Witch (Bloodaxe Books, 2000, translated with
Adam J. Sorkin-Shortlisted for Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, St. Anne's College)
was hailed as groundbreaking. Ieronim has participated in numerous international poetry
festivals, and her translations include drama from Shakespeare to Tony Kushner.
She was cultural attaché of the Romanian Embassy in Washington, DC (1992-96) and
thereafter served the Soros Foundation and the Fulbright Commission in Bucharest.
She divides her time between Bucharest and Washington.
Adam J. Sorkin, an award winning translator of contemporary Romanian poetry, was introduced
to Ioana Ieronim in the summer of 1989 when he was in Bucharest on his second Fulbright grant.
Cover photo: Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin
Photo taken in Romania from the album "The Color of Hay."
Alicia Aza, by profession an attorney specializing in corporate law
in Madrid, has published four books of poems. Both El libro de los árboles and
Las Huellas fértiles (2014) were nominated as
finalists for the Andalusian Premio de la Crítica. El viaje del invierno (2011) won
the International Rosalía de Castro Poetry Prize. Arquitectura del
silencio (Architecture of Silence) was published by Valparaíso Editions
first in the original Spanish only (2017) and then in a bilingual
edition in 2018. Aza's literary work has appeared in many international
journals and anthologies and been translated into Arabic,
Bulgarian, French, Italian, and Serbian, as well as into English. She
is a member of the Writers' Association of Spain and vice president
of La Asociación Internacional Humanismo Solidario.
About the Translators
J. Kates is a minor poet, an award-winning literary translator of Russian
and French poetry and the co-director of Zephyr Press. He has been
granted three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and an Individual
Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the
Arts. He has published three chapbooks of his own poems and one full
book, The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books). He is also the translator of
a dozen books of Russian and French poetry, has edited two anthologies
of translations, and collaborated with Stephen A. Sadow on a half dozen
books of Latin American and Peninsular Spanish poetry in translation.
Stephen A. Sadow is Professor Emeritus of Latin American Literature
and Jewish Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. He specializes in
Latin American Jewish literature and art. Among Sadow's books are King
David's Harp: Autobiographical Essays by Jewish Latin American Writers,
winner of a National Jewish Book Award and his translations of Mestizo,
A Novel by Ricardo Feierstein, Unbroken: From Auschwitz to Buenos Aires,
the autobiography of Holocaust survivor Charles Papiernik, and Philosophy
and other Fables, short essays by Isaac Goldemberg. With J. Kates, he has
co-translated poetry by César Tiempo, Teodoro Ducach, Rosita Kalina,
Angelina Muñiz-Huberman, Miryam Gover de Nasatsky, Ricardo Feierstein,
José Pivín, Isaac Goldemberg, Susana Grimberg, Daniel Chirom,
Sonia Chocrón, and Alicia Aza.
Gail Goepfert, an associate editor at RHINO Poetry, is a Midwest poet, photographer, and teacher.
She's the author of a chapbook, A Mind on Pain (2015) and Tapping Roots, released by Kelsey Books (2018).
She's received five Pushcart Nominations. Her poems rode a PACE bus, were set to music, posted next to a
sculpture in a park, and folded into an origami book. Currently, she teaches poetry for National Louis
University and writes book reviews for RHINO Reviews. Goepfert's poems have appeared in many journals and
anthologies including Sugar House Review, Stone Boat, Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine, Bluestem,
Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, The New Verse News, SWWIM, and Beloit Poetry Journal.
She lives in Illinois. More at www.gailgoepfert.com
Get Up Said the World is a personal exploration of the profound and universal dualities of life.
The book begins by stacking up evidence why someone would want to pull the covers over our heads-each poem
illuminating a new reason: loneliness, lack of purpose, lost youth, physical and emotional pain, longing,
abuse of power, man's ineptitude and cruelty. The poet amasses a soul-deadening weight that risks paralysis
and despair. In the second half, she takes the given world and derives personal meaning from it in a way
that shows the ravishing beauty and richness around us. We are led through triumphant images of nature,
kindness and courage by the skilled hands of a priestess of the beautiful. These poems often become meditations,
meanderings of the poet's mind that lead to a rejuvenation bordering on the spiritual. They depict everyday
glories with a simplicity that gets to the heart.
"In Get Up Said the World, Gail Goepfert's stunning full-length poetry collection, every poem is either
an elegy or a love poem to the world. Bringing forth her lyrical and narrative gifts, Goepfert pays close
attention to both the sorrow and beauty that are the price and prize of being fully human, looking
unflinchingly at disconnection, violence, and death, while also turning her gaze to those unexpected
moments of human redemption that make it all worthwhile. Like the book's title, these poems are a wake-up
call reminding us that "the simplest things last," and that our true heart's home can be found in the
consolations of nature, family, and authentic human connection. With a photographer's eye, Goepfert
brings us poems that celebrate both light and shadow, but always with a poet's determination to sing
despite the noise of the world, refus[ing] to hush the bee box inside me." -Angela Narciso Torres, author of Blood Orange
"In poems both searing and tender, each married to a dictionary definition, Gail Goepfert creates a new
lexicon for loss, for remembering, for relishing the ordinary. She offers readers the world with all its
flaws, celebrates each observation, reminds us that there is "No way to backspace, delete what's soulless."
Get Up Said the World is a collection that will leave readers enraptured with the details of daily living
and the words used to define it." -Donna Vorreyer, author of Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story
"Gail Goepfert's, Get Up Said the World, is a unique meditation on relationships and life. Poignant and playful,
these poems stay in our minds and ask through images and definitions: How do we persist in this living?
Goepfert's distinct form gives readers an inspiring way to view the present and past while also allowing
the poems to reverberate with each additional read. Topography shifts. Swiftly... I want to stay untamed-smart,
engaging, and thoughtful in their appreciation of the nuances of language, the beauty of these poems will enhance
your imagination and make you grateful for their stories." -Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Author Hourglass Museum and The Daily Poet
Marc Zegans is a poet and creative development advisor. He is the author of five previous collections of poems,
The Underwater Typewriter, Boys in the Woods, Pillow Talk, The Book of Clouds,
and La Commedia Sotterranea: Swizzle Felt's First Folio form the Typewriter Underground; two spoken word albums Night Work,
and Marker and Parker, and immersive theatrical productions MumandShaw, and The Typewriter Underground.
The Snow Dead debuted theatrically in Erotic Eclectic's "Sin-aesthetic" at the Lost Church during
San Francisco's 2019 Lit Crawl. Marc lives by the coast in Northern California.
His poetry can be found at marczegans.com, and he can be reached for creative advisory services at mycreativedevelopment.com.
The Snow Dead is a quiet meditation on life and death imagined as a series of marks in the cold snow-where all
color is heightened, and in which even the most subtle register of heat leaves an impression. This gathering of
connected poems elegantly incarnates the gravitas of aging - shorn of artifice and romance - in its barest essence.
"The delicate chill of loss and longing described in bone white visions of isolation
and ember red recollections of intimacy." -Janice Blaze Rocke, artistic director Erotic Eclectic
"Zegans' spare and revelatory collection embraces the paradox and beauty of winter's morbid hold.
It's a magical fascination that plays out with foxes and angels and starlets - startling little stories
that shine and entrance. The Snow Dead is a pure and inspiring joy to read." -Lo Galluccio, author of Hot Rain and Sarasota VII
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jack Mindock (b. 1926), author of Little Brown Mouse, spent sixty years of his life as an educator.
He was a junior high language arts teacher and K-12 principal in Illinois. He is a World War II Navy
veteran and historian who frequently has speaking engagements about his knowledge and experiences. He
started telling Little Brown Mouse stories to his children when they were young. They were oral stories,
made up as he went along. It was Jack's desire to have some new Little Brown Mouse adventures in print
and published for future generations of children to enjoy.
Kellis Mindock Dryer, daughter of author Jack Mindock, is a pianist and piano teacher in Cary, NC. She
enjoyed composing the two Little Brown Mouse songs in the book. They can be sung with or without the piano accompaniment.
If the children and parents reading this book cannot read music, they are welcome to recite the lyrics as
poetry or make up their own melodies.
Gloria Mindock is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, I wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me
(Nixes Mate books, 2018). She is the founding editor of Cervena Barva Press and one of the USA editors for
Levure Litteraire (France). Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated and
published into eight languages. Gloria has been awarded the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award
and was the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award for Community Service by the Newton Writing and Publishing Center.
She also has been awarded the fifth and fortieth Moon Prize by Writing in a Woman's Voice.
She was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018.
NOTE
When I was three, four, and five years old, my Dad, "Daddy Jack," would make up bedtime stories every night about the
adventures of “Little Brown Mouse.” He would leave me in suspense nightly. I couldn’t wait to hear what happened next
to Little Brown Mouse. Why Little Brown Mouse? Because Little Brown Mouse did come to my house! This book,
Little Brown Mouse, was written for mothers, fathers, and others to read to young children at bedtime. -Gloria Mindock
PREFACE
Welcome to the land of curiosity and adventure! Little Brown Mouse is a bedtime story to make you think, be curious, and ask questions.
Here are a few questions to get you started: Have you ever seen a mouse? What color are mice? What do they eat? Where do they live?
$13.95 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-35-2 | 28 Pages
ABOUT THE PRESS
ČERVENÁ BARVA PRESS was founded in April of 2005.
The press solicits poetry, fiction, and plays from various writers
around the world, and holds open contests regularly for its chapbooks,
postcards, broadsides and full-length books.
I look for work that has a strong voice, is unique, and that takes risks with language.
Please see submission guidelines for current information.
I encourage queries from Central and Eastern Europe.
