A series of chapbooks, limited editions of 300, featuring unique works by important poets.

Preparing One's Consciousness for the Avatar
Gillian Conoley

postmedia books 2017
illustrated by Courtney Gregg
32 pp.
size 155x210mm
isbn 9788874901937

In Gillian Conoley's new collection, the four poems, "Preparing One's Consciousness for the Avatar," "Recipe for the Avatar," "The Right to Be Forgotten" and "Life on Earth," challenge language to meet its utopian obligations, and to overcome those all too familiar pragmatic expectations that have come to infect our imaginations. Conoley's poetic vision, as radical as any today, insists upon nothing less than astonishment: "Jay a cobalt flash in the honeysuckle its head already gone (beyond itself)." Two collages by Courtney Gregg highlight the volume.

The Dodo, or the School for Night
Corrado Costa

postmedia books 2017
illustrated by Corrado Costa
translated in English by Paul Vangelisti
32 pp.
size 155x210mm
isbn 9788874901913

A previously uncollected and unpublished radio drama by the ground-breaking Italian poet Corrado Costa. Never part of Costa's collected writings in Italian, The Dodo was composed in 1979-1980 for Pacifica Radio's "Los Angeles Theater of the Ear" (L.A.T.E.) and premiered on KPFK Radio in Los Angeles in March 1980. The contemporary and the ancient mix in dizzying fashion in this one-act drama, driving the listener/reader to seek shelter in a shelter-less and unremitting aural landscape. "Who's there?" one is finally forced to exclaim, along with the main character ringing, as well as the characters answering their door bells. With several of Corrado Costa's witty & curious drawings to highlight the script.

The Price of Lemons: or Some of the Worst Movies Ever Made
Robert Crosson

postmedia books 2017
illustrated by Courtney Gregg
32 pp.
size 155x210mm
isbn 9788874901890

A previously unpublished work by the poet Robert Crosson. A highly condensed mock epic in the form of a memoir, The Price of Lemons chronicles the young writers life in the fifties as an undergraduate at UCLA, the start of his career as an actor and time spent abroad in Spain on the island of Mallorca. Search as he might for a better life and an alternative to McCarthyism's vision of Amerika, our young protagonist is constantly forced back to his own devices and to the written page that will come to define his life. A bizarre and hilarious coming of age tale in the highly original manner of Robert Crosson's compostions. Two collages by Los Angeles artist Courtney Gregg bookend the opening and closing of this tale.

Toodle-00
Paul Vangelisti

postmedia books 2017
illustrated by William Xerra
translated in Italian by Milli Graffi
32 pp.
size 155x210mm
isbn 9788874901883

The latest in a series of collaborations between poet Paul Vangelisti and artist William Xerra. In this bilingual edition, Xerra uses Vangelisti’s corrected typescripts as backgrounds for the collages dispersed throughout the pages of the original and translated texts. In this way the labyrinth of history embodied in Vangelisti’s poem and in the remarkable translation by Italian poet Milli Graffi is layered over with yet another labyrinth of Xerra’s own visuals. Thus, as the text explains, “Two fellow travelers, stepping from the shadows of another century, pass on the street and say, ‘Toodle-oo.’”

Desert Sequence
Dennis Phillips

postmedia books 2016
illustrated by Mario Giovanardi
32 pp.
size 155x210mm
isbn 9788874901579

The middle of so-far, three completed parts, Desert Sequence is the pivotal section in Dennis Phillips' ongoing Mappa Mundi. "Because memory," as Phillips writes, "literally, is all we have," the poet keeps on with his most human task of charting the unchartable.

La natura soggettiva del mondo medievale, la raccolta di poesie "Desert Sequence" aggiunge, distilla, distorce e riesamina opere del passato e temi ricorrenti; con tensione narrativa e liriche condensate. "Perché la memoria," come scrive Phillips, "letteralmente, è tutto quello che abbiamo," e il poeta mantiene il suo compito più umano.

Epigrams
Marcus Valerius Martialis
Translated with an afterthought by Art Beck

postmedia books 2016
illustrated by Giuliano Della Casa
32 pp.
size 155x210mm
isbn 9788874901586

Art Beck's selection of Martial's Epigrams brings vigor, immediacy and, above all, a timely music to these apparently simple and hence difficult to translate classics. These new translations, part of Beck's much longer Martial project, affirm the poet/translator's fine ear for contemporary cadences set some 2,000 years apart. The selection concludes with an "Afterthought,'" in fact the translator's own verse epistle to his cousin, also a writer, in which Beck sets out a kind of ars poetica for his renderings of Martial.

Art Beck ha selezionato una serie di epigrammi di Marziale. Queste nuove traduzioni in inglese (con testo a fronte), sono parte di un progetto su Marziale che Beck, poeta/traduttore, ha scelto per questa edizione. La selezione si conclude con un "ripensamento" di Beck, dove traduttore dove stabilisce una sorta di "ars poetica" del suo rendering.

For a Curved Surface
Ray DiPalma

postmedia books 2016
illustrated by Ray DiPalma
32 pp.
size 155x210mm
isbn 9788874901593

At once 'ludic and antic,' in the poet's own words, For a Curved Surface develops the carnivalesque pageant established in DiPalma's 2009 volume, The Ancient Use of Stone. As Don Share has written of DiPalma's polyphonic explorations, "His mind is a distillery, an alembic, and that's why his quotidian pluckings and gatherings are so musical - and so fascinating."

In una sola volta "ludico e antico", una superficie curva che sviluppa il corteo carnevalesco nelle poesie di DiPalma. Come ha scritto Don Share "la sua mente è una distilleria, un alambicco, ed è per questo il suo quotidiano è così musicale e così affascinante".

The Unfamiliar Familiar
Martha Ronk

postmedia books 2016
illustrated by Michele Lombardelli
32 pp.
size 155x210mm
isbn 9788874901616

At once 'ludic and antic,' in the poet's own words, For a Curved Surface develops the carnivalesque pageant established in DiPalma's 2009 volume, The Ancient Use of Stone. As Don Share has written of DiPalma's polyphonic explorations, "His mind is a distillery, an alembic, and that's why his quotidian pluckings and gatherings are so musical—and so fascinating."

La poesia di Martha Ronk è una meditazione su Los Angeles, sua città di adozione. In un luogo dove la memoria è inevitabilmente persa, Ronk guarda la vita quotidiana in cui è più difficile separare la familiarità dal suo opposto. Uno dei santi patroni di Los Angeles, Raymond Chandler, ne sarebbe orgoglioso.

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