An Unknown Road, Haiku by Adelaide B. Shaw Published by Modern English Tanka Press

An Unknown Road, the debut collection of haiku by Adelaide B. Shaw, offers readers “a different treat for every moment” says an’ya, editor of Moonset Literary Newspaper. Ray Rasmussen, managing editor of Contemporary Haibun Online, says, “A welcome aspect of reading a collection of haiku by a single writer is that it's like being taken on a walk in the writer's neighborhood. Adelaide Shaw's collection takes us on the best kind of walk—small things become visible and remind us of our own meanders.” An outstanding first collection of haiku—don’t miss it!

Baltimore, Maryland–May 31, 2008–An Unknown Road, the first collection of haiku by Adelaide B. Shaw, has been published in trade paperback by Modern English Tanka Press. All who love haiku will want to read, and re-read, this outstanding debut collection from the accomplished haiku poet, Adelaide B. Shaw.

About Author:

Adelaide B. Shaw was born in New Haven, Connecticut. While in high school, her family moved to Los Angeles, California. In 1971 she and her husband and three children moved to a small village near Geneva, Switzerland. Returning to the United States in 1976 the family settled in Scarsdale, New York, a suburb near New York City. Adelaide has been an elementary school teacher, a principal’s assistant and a legal assistant before her retirement in 1997. She began writing haiku in the early 1970’s and has won several awards. Her haiku have appeared in numerous journals in the United States and abroad, in print and on-line. In addition to haiku, Adelaide writes tanka, haibun and short fiction. She and her husband currently live in the small rural community of Millbrook, New York.

For media inquiries or to arrange an interview with the author, contact Adelaide B. Shaw by e-mail at adelaidebshaw (at) optonline (dot) net. Publisher information at: www.modernenglishtankapress.com.

This book is available from www.Lulu.com/modernenglishtanka and from major booksellers; or by order from the publisher. Complete information and mail order form are available online at www.modernenglishtankapress.com. Price: $11.95 USD. ISBN 978-0-9817691-0-3. Trade paperback. 68 pages, 6.00" x 9.00", perfect binding, 60# cream interior paper, black and white interior ink, 100# exterior paper, full-color exterior ink.

About Modern English Tanka Press:

Modern English Tanka Press is an independent equity publishing house in Baltimore, Maryland, dedicated to producing books and periodicals of lasting literary value. A family business, we treat our customers and partners in publishing like family. Our publications are produced using modern print-on-demand production and distribution methods. We publish tanka, haiku, and other fine poetry. Our special mission is to promote the tanka form of poetry, to educate newcomers to tanka about this most ancient poetic form, and to work for wider publication of tanka in both specialty and mainstream poetry venues. To those ends, we publish the journals “Modern English Tanka,” “Atlas Poetica,” “Modern Haiga,” and special edition books of tanka, haiku, and other fine verse. We operate www.TankaCentral.com, the internet megasite for tanka, with its popular “Tanka News” blog, and the poetry web hub, www.ShortVerse.com.

Contact:

Denis M. Garrison, owner
Modern English Tanka Press
443-802-1249
Email to dmg (at) themetpress (dot) com.
www.modernenglishtankapress.com www.modernenglishtanka.com www.atlaspoetica.com
www.shortverse.com www.tankacentral.com www.tankanews.com www.modernhaiga.com

Two books published in the last year by Modern English Tanka Press, Alexis Rotella's tanka collection LIP PRINTS and Denis Garrison's collection of formal and free verse SAILOR IN THE RAIN AND OTHER POEMS have been listed in the "Best Books for Summer Reading, 2008" by Book Review Editor Grace Cavalieri in The Montserrat Review.
http://www.themontserratreview.com/BestoSummer2008.html 

Lip Prints Tanka and Other Short Poems 1979–2007 by Alexis Rotella
Price: $21.95 USD. ISBN 978-0-6151-6501-1. Trade paperback. 160 pages.
Price: $35.95 USD. ISBN 978-0-6151-6502-8. Hardcover with dust jacket. 160 pages.
“Lip Prints by Alexis Rotella is her most beautifully crafted and imagistic book to date.” —Maria Mazziotti Gillan, editor of Paterson Literary Review and author of Italian Women in Black Dresses (Guernica Editions)
“Alexis Rotella has been writing free-form tanka with a lyrical, confessional voice exploring a wide range of emotions, feelings and insights. Her tanka, though firmly grounded in the American landscape of experiences, follow the ‘no subject off limits’ approach championed by the famous Modernist Japanese tanka poets, Akiko and Hiroshi Yosano (Tekkan). Alexis has the ability to capture a relationship in a phrase and deepen the moment of insightful feeling with surprising attention to details that tell us ‘the rest of the story.’ Her new collection, Lip Prints, is an opportunity for tanka readers to enjoy a rich body of work drawn from over thirty years of being a very alive writer.” —Randy Brooks, Editor Mayfly Magazine, Professor of English, Millikin University

Sailor in the Rain and Other Poems by Denis M. Garrison
Price: $19.95 USD. ISBN 978-0-6151-8555-2. Trade paperback. 136 pages.
Price: $37.95 USD. ISBN 978-0-6151-8497-5. Hardcover with dust jacket. 136 pages.
“Contained in Sailor in the Rain are some of the best poems of an American original, Denis M. Garrison.  . . . Garrison’s sense of place and region, and his consciousness and reckoning of good and evil, order and chaos, truth and deceit, are all essential to his character as a poet, and that character relates his work to a diverse group of poets who span several centuries and have similar interests and thematic pre-occupations. His ‘Confessio’ might have been written by John Donne, as part of that poet’s series of ‘Holy Sonnets.’ Garrison’s haunted and haunting landscapes relate to similar metaphysical elements found in the earliest American poets and prose masters: Edward Taylor and Philip Freneau, Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Garrison’s concerns with symbolic argument and imagery (including the ambiguous and macabre) find their precursors in Edgar Alan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Stéphane Mallarmé —the latter, also, for a shared fascination for the interplay and revelations of style and content that a poet may achieve when pursuing the essence of invented, perfect poetic forms.” —Michael McClintock, in his Preface to Sailor in the Rain and Other Poems.

Grace Cavalieri has authored 14 books and 20 produced plays. She was a founder of radio station WPFW-FM in Washington D.C. Her program " The Poet and the Poem" has been on public radio for 30 years without interruption, now from the Library of Congress via NPR satellite. She has founded two poetry presses in Washington DC.

Worth noting: Both books have cover art by Karen McClintock of Fresno, California.  

It is very gratifying to have a tanka collection, in particular, on the same list with poets like Charles Simic, Mark Doty, and Rod Jellema.

Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack by M. Kei Published by Modern English Tanka Press

“Slow Motion: The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack” by M. Kei is a break-through collection of waterman poetry from the Chesapeake Bay by a poet who actually knows what he is talking about. M. Kei crews on the title boat, the Skipjack Martha Lewis. Kirsty Karkow, prize-winning poet and author of “water poems” and “shorelines,” says: “A Skipjack is a historic vessel where form follows function with a rough beauty. These characteristics are apparent in the sensitive, poetic voyages of an aging boat and the men who work her sails. This history and trip log is sure to delight any sailor or lover of the Chesapeake Bay . . . and of poetry.”

Baltimore, Maryland–May 27, 2008–Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack by M. Kei has been published in trade paperback by Modern English Tanka Press, Baltimore, Maryland. This break-through collection of waterman poetry from the Chesapeake Bay, by a poet who actually knows what he is talking about, is sure to delight any sailor or lover of the Chesapeake Bay and of poetry. The poet M. Kei crews on the title boat, the Skipjack Martha Lewis, out of Havre de Grace, Maryland. The short lyric forms used in Slow Motion are perfect vehicles for the laconic voice of the waterman. Kei has captured a bit of Chesapeake magic in a bottle and all who love the Bay, boating, and poetry, are a little richer for it.

"Kei, in his Slow Motion: The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, has made these poems on the Chesapeake Bay with its sailboats and workmen and beauty into a tour de force. Having read hundreds and hundreds of modern haiku, I find that Kei's, along with his many tanka, communicate his joy in the beauty of sky and wave and sea and work. There is a sustaining harmony in the collection, at times earthy, at times transcendental, at times Whitmanesque. In this journey of log poetry, along with commentary and notes, Kei has extended the range of our poetic world." –Sanford Goldstein, co-translator of Midaregami, Tangled Hair

About Author:

M. Kei crews aboard a skipjack, a traditional wooden sailboat used to fish for oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. He is the author of Heron Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay, and the editor of the critically acclaimed anthology, Fire Pearls: Short Masterpieces of the Human Heart. Kei edits the biannual tanka journal, Atlas Poetica, which is dedicated to poetry of place. His latest project is Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka of 2008, of which he serves as founder and editor-in-chief. He has published more than 800 poems and scholarly articles in five languages and ten countries. He also compiles the Bibliography of English-Language Tanka.

For media inquiries or to arrange an interview with the author, contact: M. Kei by e-mail at kujaku (at) verizon (dot) net. Publisher information at: www.modernenglishtankapress.com.

This book is available from www.Lulu.com/modernenglishtanka and from major booksellers; or by order from the publisher. Complete information and mail order form are available online at www.modernenglishtankapress.com. Price: $16.95 USD. ISBN 978-0-6152-1265-4. Trade paperback. 164 pages, 6.00" x 9.00", perfect binding, 60# cream interior paper, black and white interior ink, 100# exterior paper, full-color exterior ink.

About Modern English Tanka Press:

Modern English Tanka Press is an independent equity publishing house in Baltimore, Maryland, dedicated to producing books and periodicals of lasting literary value. A family business, we treat our customers and partners in publishing like family. Our publications are produced using modern print-on-demand production and distribution methods. We publish tanka, haiku, and other fine poetry. Our special mission is to promote the tanka form of poetry, to educate newcomers to tanka about this most ancient poetic form, and to work for wider publication of tanka in both specialty and mainstream poetry venues. To those ends, we publish the journals “Modern English Tanka,” “Atlas Poetica,” “Modern Haiga,” and special edition books of tanka, haiku, and other fine verse. We operate www.TankaCentral.com, the internet megasite for tanka, with its popular “Tanka News” blog, and the poetry web hub, www.ShortVerse.com.

Contact:

Denis M. Garrison, owner
Modern English Tanka Press
443-802-1249
Email to dmg (at) themetpress (dot) com.
www.modernenglishtankapress.com www.modernenglishtanka.com www.atlaspoetica.com
www.shortverse.com www.tankacentral.com www.tankanews.com www.modernhaiga.com

Leaving My Found Eden : A Poetography Exhibit
June 28 - July 27, 2008
Thursday – Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

James Gray Gallery
Bergamot Station Art Center
2525 Michigan Avenue, Bldg. D4
Santa Monica, California 90404

310 315 9502
www.jamesgraygallery.com
www.poetography.org

For several years, I have been working on an art form
that I call Poetography, merging English-language
tanka poetry with black & white photography. And this
summer I am going to have an exhibit of my Poetography
works in Santa Monica, California at the prestigious
James Gray Gallery at the Bergamot Station Art Center.

With Poetography, the tanka poetry is merged with the
photographic imagery to create a dynamic tension that
infuses new meanings into the words and images. I am
hoping that this show will promote English-language
tanka to a wider audience.

There is a gallery opening reception on June 28, from
6:00 to 9:00. I would like to invite all tanka lovers
to see the exhibit and, if they have time, to come to
the reception.